Virginia senators slam delay in offshore drilling

The lawmakers said in a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that recent comments by a department official that the Virginia lease sale originally planned for late 2011 would be delayed until 2012 at the earliest are frustrating given that drilling creates jobs and needed energy supplies.

The offshore Virginia area that would be leased may hold 130 million barrels of oil and 1.14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to government estimates.

The senators, both Democrats, asked Salazar to complete the Interior Department’s study on the environmental impact of drilling of the Virginia coast and publish rules to allow energy companies to conduct seismic surveys to determine the potential oil and gas resources in Atlantic waters.

“We would urge you to promptly commence these steps in order to ensure that the Virginia lease sale is conducted in a manner that is timely and consistent with the interests of the environment and our national security,” wrote Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner.

Virginia would be the first state on the U.S. Atlantic seaboard to have offshore drilling since a congressional ban and a presidential moratorium against offshore energy exploration in Atlantic waters ended in 2008.

The federal government’s current five-year offshore drilling plan, which was created by the Bush administration, calls for leasing a triangular area located about 50 miles off the Virginia shoreline in November 2011.

Salazar says he will decide by this summer whether the Bush plan to allow drilling off Virginia will go forward.

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