President Barack Obama abandoned its plans for new oil drilling in the southeast Atlantic coast, a move that served as a milestone for environmentalists worldwide, coastal residents and the U.S. Defense Department, but can tender international investors and petroleum companies.
This is a move that is consistent with the president's bold support to combat climate change. The president had taken the lead role during the recent Paris climate change agreement, which seeks to reduce worldwide carbon emissions produced by fossil fuels.
In ABC News, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said that the cancellation of oil drilling "protects the Atlantic for future generations...the administration had listened to thousands of people in coastal communities from Florida to New England."
Jacqueline Savitz, the Vice president Oceana, a U.S. environmental group Oceana, added that "the move will aid in the battle against climate change. It will prevent oil spills and coastal industrialization, it makes seismic testing unnecessary and it will help promote the clean energy solutions that we so desperately need," she said in USA Today.
However, Obama's decision was criticized by Republicans and unhappy businessmen. There could be more than 3.3 billion barrels of oil and 31.3 trillion cubic feef of natural gas that could be benefited from the Atlantic's outer continental shelf, Barry Russel, the president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America said in Washington Times.
Not drilling in the Atlantic coast could further hurt the declining oil and gas industry. Russel added that, it "closes the door to more American jobs and opportunities for our economy. This plan will make our nation less competitive, limit our geopolitical advantages abroad and force us to be more reliant on foreign sources of oil from volatile regions of the world."
There are still other proposals that allows new leases for the continuation of oil drilling in other areas such as in the Gulf of Mexico and the coasts of Alaska. Although the proposals are not final, The Atlantic has reported that these have already been stated in a revised proposal from the Department of the Interior handling offshore fossil-fuel drilling from 2017 to 2022.
The Republican governors of the affected states, Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat in Virginia, and Nikki Haley, a Republican of South Carolina expressed their support for continuing and expanding oil drilling in the areas.
Local communities still fear for the destruction of their towns, resorts, and shellfish fisheries when the oil drilling will commence. The possibility of an oil spill could alter the envirnoment and the lives of the people in that place.
