ENERGY INDEPENDENCE ON THE HORIZON - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 57

BP's Deepwater Horizon oil platform unleashed a devastating chain
of events. h e shock immediately killed eleven men and injured sev-
enteen more. Five thousand feet below, oil poured into the sea at a
rate of as much as sixty thousand barrels a day. Within two days, a
sheen was detected on the ocean's surface; for nearly three months,
the nation would be transi xed as everything from golf balls to a giant
cone was used to try to plug the wild well. When the l ow was i nally
stemmed in early July, Gulf Coast residents—not to mention BP lead-
ership, the White House, and most of America—breathed a sigh of
relief.
For the oil industry, though, the i ght was only beginning. More than
two decades of largely blemish-free operation had i nally culminated
in a Democratic president deciding to open big new of shore tracts
to development. Now a single disaster was throwing the process into
reverse. By December, the administration withdrew its of shore plans.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar defended the decision bluntly: “We
believe the most appropriate course of action is to focus on develop-
ment with existing leases and not expand to new areas at this time.” 18
Tight oil might get technology enthusiasts buzzing, and Alaska might
raise the most environmental ire, but it's the outer continental shelf
(OCS) of the United States that many petro-optimists look to for the
biggest gains. Mainstream projections of of shore production typically
foresee a steady decline for decades to come. But bullish analysts have
argued that of shore production could surge from less than two million
barrels a day today to nearly four million a day within a decade or so,
and then hold steady near that level. 19
The secret? Often it's access to new lands: the Atlantic and Pacific
parts of the OCS have long been off-limits, as have large parts of
the Gulf of Mexico. If this changed, production could ramp up. No
one can confidently say precisely how much: given the dearth of
exploration in recent decades, knowledge of what lies beneath the
surface of the sea is limited. Prices would need to stay above fifty
dollars a barrel or so to make new drilling worthwhile, and leaps in
technology could change the picture yet again. It's not unreason-
able, though, to imagine that another couple million barrels a day
of American oil could be within relatively easy reach.