January 9, 2018 — BOSTON — The state’s environment, tourism and fishing industry could be threatened by President Donald Trump’s plan to open up more coastal areas to offshore drilling, according to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, who said the proposal puts “nearly every single mile of coastline in the United States in the crosshairs of an oil spill.”
“Nothing is sacred,” Markey told reporters from the Kennedy Federal Building. “All of the United States is going to be open for the oil industry to be able to drill. That is something that the American people will want to have resolved on the floor of the House and Senate, and that is something that I am going to guarantee him that he will see. This is going to be a huge fight across our country.”
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday announced a proposal that would make more than 90 percent of the national outer continental shelf available for oil and gas exploration. Currently, 94 percent of federal offshore acreage is off-limits, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
The 380-page draft plan includes a note that Gov. Charlie Baker does not “support inclusion of areas adjacent to Massachusetts,” and Attorney General Maura Healey “strongly opposes opening up any of the Atlantic or any other new areas to oil and gas leasing.”
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates there are 89.9 billion barrels of oil and 327.5 trillion cubic feet of gas that have yet to be discovered on the outer continental shelf, including 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 38.2 cubic feet in the Atlantic portion of the shelf.
According to the American Petroleum Institute, Atlantic oil and natural gas development could deliver $51 billion in new government revenue, nearly 280,000 jobs and 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent per day for domestic energy production by 2035.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times