Bill Allowing More Drilling Along Coasts Appears Dead (???)

[struggle4progress]

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: November 11, 2006

HOUSTON, Nov. 9 — ...

Now, with the Democrats’ mid-term election victory, the proponents of drilling off the nation’s beaches are reluctantly jockeying to settle for a small patch of new offshore exploration allowed in a competing and more modest Senate drilling bill. “I don’t want to end up having no progress,” said Representative John E. Peterson, a Pennsylvania Republican who is a leading proponent for expanded offshore drilling. “Something is better than nothing.” ...

The Senate bill opens to bidding 8.3 million acres of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The waters, south of the Florida Panhandle and 235 miles west of Tampa, are thought to hold 5.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.3 billion barrels of crude oil ...

Many lawmakers and energy industry officials had expressed little enthusiasm for the Senate bill before the election. They said it was too limited because it would produce, at most, only the equivalent of two months of domestic demand for oil, along with enough gas to cool and heat six million homes for 15 years ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/business/11drilling.html?ref=business

This sort of "play it down" coverage may be typical of this lameduck session ...

[4dsc]

1. but its a great peak oil primer

all the big oil fields have been discovered and will all peak soon. Newer discoveries often smaller in nature and these will be more expansive to extract and develope..

Oh we live in interesting times..