“We urge you to maintain the longstanding protections for our states along the East Coast by removing any proposed offshore oil and gas leasing in the Atlantic Ocean,” the 11 Senators, representing the US states of Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Florida, stated in the letter.
“[W]ith all of the serious known negative impacts associated with offshore drilling, there is simply no justification for opening up the Atlantic,” they added.
The lawmakers argued that the oil and gas industry already was holding extensive existing leases on public land in the Gulf of Mexico where they were not currently producing oil.
The offshore oil and gas leases proposed for the US states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia are “completely unnecessary,” they said.
The Senators warned of the dangers of another oil spill like the 2010 BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill that impacted economies across the southern United States.
“No buffer from the coastline is sufficient to prevent the devastating impacts of a spill,” the 11 Senators pointed out, adding that “offshore oil spills do not respect artificial state boundaries.”
The DOI has initiated a draft proposal to lease land off the US East Coast to oil and gas companies. The five year plan developed at DOI includes 14 potential lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and the Atlantic, according to a DOI press release.
