Zinke sees low demand, strong opposition, for new offshore drilling

[DonViejo]

BY TIMOTHY CAMA - 04/06/18 03:42 PM EDT

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke acknowledged Friday that President Trump’s plan to open large swaths of the East and West coasts to offshore oil and natural gas drilling faces significant headwinds.

Speaking to an offshore wind conference in New Jersey, Zinke said drilling companies are not that interested in new areas offshore, while there’s “strong opposition” in most of the neighboring states.

The acknowledgements could be a sign that Zinke will significantly narrow down his plan released in January, under which the entire Gulf of Mexico, Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and all around Alaska, would have been open to drilling.

Zinke cited a major offshore drilling rights say last month in the Gulf of Mexico to judge the industry’s interest in drilling in new areas as “modest at best, or low.”

“Most of the companies out there realize that you have to have infrastructure to tie your rigs together, that infrastructure's expensive, that also offshore oil and gas is a greater risk environmentally than producing offshore wind, for instance, as well as onshore oil and gas,” he said.

“It seems like offshore oil and gas in this country is either moving to Latin America, where some of the environmental regulations are not as strict.”

more
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/382005-zinke-sees-low-demand-strong-opposition-for-new-offshore-drilling

[procon]

1. "where some of the environmental regulations are not as strict."

He's totally clueless. He has no understanding, or interest, about why the majority of citizens support strict environmental protection laws in the US.

It will take many years to undo the damages that this bunch of greedy bastards are wreaking on the world, and decades more to repair our relationships with allies who now distrust the US because of Trump's dishonesty.