Congress Urged to Finish Vital Offshore Energy Legislation
For Immediate Release
November 30, 2006
Contact:
Michael Kearns
National Ocean Industries Assn.
(202) 347-6900
Congress Urged to Finish Vital Offshore Energy Legislation
Washington - In a letter to the leadership in the House of Representatives, Tom Fry, president of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), urged Congress to complete much-needed legislation to open more acreage on the nation’s Outer Continental Shelf to oil and natural gas exploration and production.
Fry explained that, “[t]his summer, both the House and Senate made history: for the first time in over two decades, legislators took the vital step of passing bills to expand the nation’s access to the domestic oil and natural gas resources beneath our own OCS. Members of the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4761, the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act and the United States Senate approved S. 3711, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act.
“Both deliberative bodies clearly recognized that the future security and economic prosperity of the nation require rethinking the policies that have consistently placed over 80 percent of the OCS off-limits,” argued Fry, “despite a long record of safe and environmentally-responsible exploration and production.”
Fry then called upon the House leadership to take the necessary steps to complete the work on this issue before the close of the 109th Congress. For practical reasons, this means that the House should accept the Senate’s bill and call for a vote.
“[D]espite broad support for the objectives that OCS legislation would achieve and indications from the President that such legislation would promptly be signed into law, the House and Senate have not yet come to agreement on a bill to be sent to the President. We cannot afford to remain the only industrialized nation in the world that refuses to consider development of our own domestic energy supplies. Time is running out,” said Fry.
“We urge the Congress not to leave the job unfinished. Every day that goes by without a law that brings more American energy to market leaves the nation that much less secure and prosperous.”
Download the full text of the letter.
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NOIA is the only national trade association representing all segments of the offshore industry with an interest in the exploration and production of energy resources on the nation’s outer continental shelf. The NOIA membership comprises more than 300 companies engaged in business activities ranging from producing to drilling, engineering to marine and air transport, offshore construction to equipment manufacture and supply, telecommunications to finance and insurance.
