Crude Oil: The Trump administration’s hopes of opening up new waters for offshore oil and gas drilling is increasingly focused on the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, an area that has long been off limits. The Trump administration has proposed to open nearly all of the U.S. coastline – including the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, plus all of the Gulf – but has run into political opposition in many places. In any event, the industry would be most interested in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. “The eastern Gulf is really 99% of what all the operators care about,” Christopher Guith, a senior vice president for policy at the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Energy Institute, told S&P Global Platts. “It's really all that matters. It's what they have the most data on, there's some exploration at play and, more importantly, there's some ancillary data from the existing exploration in the central Gulf.” For now, the Eastern Gulf remains off limits until at least 2022, and there is talk of extending the moratorium.
|
