A federal judge recently dealt a blow to the economy -- and our nation's security.
Sharon Gleason, a district court judge in Alaska, blocked one of President Trump's executive orders that seeks to expand offshore oil and natural gas drilling. In response to the ruling, the administration indefinitely delayed its rollout of a five-year plan to spur offshore energy development in the Gulf of Mexico as well as the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
This delay will prevent American energy companies from extracting our offshore oil and gas riches. Workers will lose out on job opportunities. And the nation will lose out on valuable sources of fuel that could reduce our reliance on hostile petrostates like Venezuela and Russia.
A few months after taking office, President Trump signed an executive order opening federal offshore territories to energy exploration. Ever since, the Interior Department has been working on a plan to open up much of the "outer continental shelf" -- the undersea land between three and 200 miles off the coasts -- to development. Nearly 90 billion barrels of oil and 328 trillion cubic feet of natural gas may lie beneath the outer continental shelf -- enough to heat America for two full years.
The United States is on the cusp of complete energy independence -- a goal that seemed an impossible just a decade ago. Advances in the drilling technique known as fracking have enabled companies to tap previously inaccessible oil and natural gas deposits trapped in underground shale rock formations. From 2010 to 2017, oil production shot up more than 70 percent.
Thanks to this fracking boom, the United States has reduced its reliance on hostile or unstable oil-rich nations. Last year, oil imports from Saudi Arabia reached their lowest levels since the 1980s.
However, we're not completely independent yet. Saudi Arabia and Iraq are still among the top five sources of U.S. petroleum imports. Venezuela and Russia remain in the top 10.
Offshore energy could enable us to break our foreign oil habit once and for all. Offshore production accounted for 16 percent of all U.S. crude oil production in 2018, increased by about 30 percent between 2013 and 2017, and is now pushing 1.7 million barrels per day.
Expanding drilling to areas of the outer continental shelf would raise that figure substantially. It'd also create 840,000 jobs and generate a cumulative $200 billion in government revenue by 2035.
Environmental activists have scared people into believing that offshore drilling is unsafe. That's simply not true.
Since 2010, the oil and natural gas industry has revised or implemented more than 100 new safety regulations to protect against spills.
There's no good reason for the administration to stall its offshore expansion plan. Judge Gleason's ruling will likely be overturned.
Workers are eager to tap America's immense offshore oil wealth and put the nation on the path to full energy independence. It's time to let them.
Michael James Barton is the founder of Hyatt Solutions and speaks around the country on energy and energy security matters. He previously served as the deputy director of Middle East policy at the Pentagon. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
