By: Administrator

 Other Offshore Producing Nations Do Not Fall In Line With U.S. Drilling Ban

China and Russia are drilling within 50 miles of Florida

 The Administration asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to reinstate its politically driven moratorium on deepwater petroleum drilling (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704178004575351361032082760.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories).   However, Gulf Coast residents are saying “Stop the oil, not job creation”:  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39433.html.  Some salient points from the Politico article:

• We already spend $1 billion a day on foreign oil. With a moratorium, that number will rise and our dependence on OPEC grow.  Both outcomes increase our energy and economic insecurity -- moving the country in the wrong direction.
• Oil does more than power our vehicles. It is the building block for the plastics we take for granted. Natural gas is vital to our manufacturing sector and, in particular, our chemical and fertilizer industries. As the price of these fuels goes up, so does the cost of doing business in the United States.
• An extended moratorium on deepwater drilling might only serve to stop our economic recovery in its tracks. It would certainly result in even more job losses.

Other producing nations appear to agree with Gulf residents.  Brazil’s oil company, Petrobras, states that it will learn from the Gulf of Mexico disaster, but has not wavered from plans to invest $118.8 billion in exploration and production in the 2010-2014 period.  This Dow Jones news wire reports more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100706-702502.html. Offshore oil production is such an important part of Brazil’s broader economic development strategy that today’s Oil Daily reports that “with a few months before the election for president, nobody would dare to talk of a drilling moratorium.”

Greenland continues to explore off of its coast with a drill rig that was most recently in the GOM: http://www.pennenergy.com/index/petroleum/display/6589455920/articles/pennenergy/petroleum/offshore/2010/06/arctic-exploration.html. With current moratorium policies, it is unclear whether that drill rig or its jobs will come back to the Gulf of Mexico.

Australia too continues to explore in its deep waters: www.pennenergy.com/index/petroleum/display/4784399674/articles/pennenergy/petroleum/offshore/2010/07/chevron-discovers.html .

Per IHS CERA analysis, http://press.ihs.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=4267,  “If deepwater production was viewed as its own “country,” it would exceed that of every other country except Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States.”