Off Virginia's coast the drilling process has begun

CNN:

Remember "drill, baby drill"? In its last weeks in office, the Bush administration is starting to make it happen by quietly starting the process of exploration and drilling off the coast of Virginia.

The move means that President-elect Barack Obama and brand new interior secretary nominee Ken Salazar -- a Democratic senator from Colorado -- will have to jump feet-first into the decades-old debate over offshore oil drilling. It's an issue where the two disagreed at one point.

Wait. Virginia?

The state is ground zero for the drilling debate because of possible reserves off the coast and what energy experts see as a friendlier government than elsewhere.

The U.S. Interior Department has completed the first step, closing a public comment period on the proposal to lease 2.9 million acres of ocean to natural gas and oil companies. The pie-shaped area begins 50 miles off Virginia's coast, straight out from Virginia Beach on the south and across from Virginia's boundary on the Delmarva peninsula to the north.

"The East Coast really has not been looked at for 30 years," said Randall Luthi, who heads up the drilling plan as director of Interior's Minerals Management Service. Luthi spoke from his Washington office to CNN Radio.

"Our best guess is that area could contain about 130 million barrels of oil and 1.14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas," he said.

...

The rest of the article is devoted to those who hate energy production and looks for excuses not to explore and produce oil and gas. One of the new excuses is that the Navy might run into the rigs. I frankly have more faith in the seamanship of the Navy and feel certain they will be able to lock in the GPS coordinates of the rigs and avoid them.

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