Offshore drilling on the US Atlantic coast for oil and gas took place from 1947 to the early 1980s. Oil companies drilled 5 wells in Atlantic Florida state waters and 51 exploratory wells on federal leases on the outer continental shelf of the Atlantic coast. None of the wells were completed as producing wells. All the leases have now reverted to the government.
Although no oil or gas have been produced from beneath US Atlantic waters, there are active offshore fields to the south in offshore Cuba and to the north in offshore Canada.
Each coastal state along the Atlantic coast owns the territory extending three nautical miles (3.45 statute, or land miles) from the shore at mean low tide, and has jurisdiction to decide whether or not, and under what terms, to lease the territory for oil and gas. The federal government owns and controls the minerals between three and 200 nautical miles (370 km) from the shore.
In accordance with congressional restrictions and presidential orders, no federal leasing has taken place on the offshore US Atlantic coast since the early 1980s. The federal government had scheduled a lease sale offshore Virginia, to take place in 2011, and in March 2010, US President Barack Obama announced his intention to open the Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic planning areas to oil and gas exploration. However, lease sale plans were cancelled in May 2010 following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In December 2010, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a ban on drilling in federal waters off the Atlantic coast through 2017.
Read more about Offshore Drilling On The US Atlantic Coast: Reserves, Straits of Florida, Southern Atlantic Coast, Middle Atlantic Coast, North Atlantic Coast, Future Lease Sales, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words drilling, atlantic and/or coast:
“Don’t spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report the news it brings.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Have we even so much as discovered and settled the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the coast ... and tell me if it looks like a discovered and settled country, and not rather, for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-Man’s Land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)