While the low price of crude oil is threatening to shut down a fair amount of onshore drilling in the U.S., the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released on Tuesday its draft program proposal for 14 offshore lease sales commencing in 2017 and running through 2022. Included in the draft proposal is the first sale off the Atlantic coast in more than 30 years.

Of the proposed leases sales 10 are located in the Gulf of Mexico, 3 offshore of Alaska including one in Cook inlet, and the single sale off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

The BOEM (and the Obama administration) issued a decision in July to re-open the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf to drilling in the five-year round of lease sales beginning in 2017. To accommodate military needs and minimize conflicts with other uses of the area off the Atlantic coast, the BOEM has included a buffer zone of 50 miles where drilling will remain prohibited.

Drilling offshore of Alaska includes areas in both the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off the north coast of the state, inside the Arctic Circle. The proposed program excludes a 25-mile buffer zone along the coast of the Chukchi Sea and other restrictions in both bodies of water to protect whales and other wildlife.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said:

The safe and responsible development of our nation’s domestic energy resources is a key part of the President’s efforts to support American jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. This is a balanced proposal that would make available nearly 80 percent of the undiscovered technically recoverable resources, while protecting areas that are simply too special to develop.

The document released today is much closer to the beginning of the lease sales than to the end. The oil industry wants more area to be put up for sale and environmentalist groups are reasonably certain to want more areas protected. The first sale in Alaska is tentatively scheduled for 2020 and the Atlantic coast sale is not scheduled until 2021. There’s lots of time left for argument.

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