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Description
In June 1990, President George H. W. Bush responded to concerns about preserving the ocean and coastal environment with a directive ordering the Department of Interior not to conduct leasing or preleasing activity in places other than the Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and limited parts of Alaska offshore until 2000. The moratorium affected virtually all of the coasts of the North Atlantic, California, Washington, Oregon, New England, Mid-Atlantic and the Northern Aleutian Basin. It also included the Eastern Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Southwest Florida, an area extending 700 miles from Baldwin County, Alabama, southward to the Florida Keys.
Bush's directive expanded a moratorium Congress imposed in 1982 that removed 736,000 acres off the coast of northern and central California from leasing for oil and gas exploration and production. The concern for possible environmental damage and social disruption caused by both routine activities and accidents, such as oil spills, resulted in local pressure to prevent these possibilities by removing areas from the lease schedule. In 1998, President Clinton extended Bush's Executive Order until June 2012.
Impact
Although debate continues over the appropriate public policy for offshore development of energy resources, the moratorium on oil and gas development has remained in place since Bush's directive in 1990. This moratorium has resulted in making a significant portion of estimated future natural gas and oil supplies unavailable for development. In the United States, estimated undiscovered conventionally recoverable resources in the Federal Offshore area total 75 billion barrels of oil (BBO) and 362 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas, of which an estimated 21 percent of the oil and 17 percent of the gas are in the moratorium area. As of 2000, undiscovered conventionally recoverable resources in the Gulf of Mexico were estimated at 193 Tcf of gas and 37 BBO, with the moratorium area in the Gulf containing about 4 percent of the gas and 7 percent of the oil. Along both the East and West coasts, all estimated undiscovered conventionally recoverable resources (47 Tcf of gas and 13 BBO) are in the moratorium area. In the North Aleutian Basin in Alaska, about 6 percent of the estimated 123 Tcf of gas resources are in the moratorium area and about 1 percent of the estimated 25 BB of oil.
Note that the moratorium was lifted in 2008 (see related text).
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