Alaska U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski said Monday that regulations put forth by the Obama administration have resulted in stalled drilling projects in both the Pacific and the Atlantic.
“We fail to boost our offshore production at our own expense. America’s neighbors are not drilling for fun or for sport; they’ve chosen to proceed to create new jobs, generate new revenues, and increase the energy supply and prosperity of their citizens,” Ms. Murkowski wrote in a piece published by the Wall Street Journal.
The Alaska Republican said a proposed five-year energy plan put forth by the Obama administration would leave the nation susceptible to OPEC. Ms. Murkowski also noted that the proposed energy plan would cost the nation jobs, pointing to the latest Labor Department employment report, which shows the nation’s rate of unemployment at 9 percent.
“We can sit between active drilling operations in neighboring countries, complaining that it’s too risky to develop our own resources while the world around us does exactly that. In this case, we will lose the economic opportunities but still face essentially the same environmental threats. That makes no sense,” she adds. “Imagine that foreign development is not done to our standards and a spill occurs. Neither geology nor ocean currents will respect our national boundaries,” Ms. Murkowski said.
Ms. Murkowski has previously called for tapping vast reserves of oil and natural gas off of America’s shores. The Alaska Republican said the U.S. should seek to extract nearly 86 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from its offshore reserves.
