The Issue

Our nation's jobs and energy security remain at risk due to a regulatory blockade that is being imposed by the Obama administration on America's energy producers. Unless regulators start issuing permits and plans for safe oil and gas drilling, we cannot produce the energy America needs.

Unfortunately, the federal officials at the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has imposed a "one size fits all" approach to permitting that ignores the strong track record of the shallow water drilling industry. The recent history of shallow water permitting in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico is a cautionary tale for those who profess optimism about the end of the deepwater drilling moratorium. Although the moratorium on shallow water drilling was lifted in May 2010, permit approvals have been nominal.

Shallow water operators have long performed environmentally-sensitive exploration in the Gulf in a manner that maintains the safety of our employees. For more than six decades, offshore shallow water drilling operations have been conducted in the Gulf safely and with minimal incident. Our employees have developed significant experience, expertise and oversight capabilities to conduct shallow water operations. These skilled employees use some of the best technologies in the world to manage risk, such as blowout preventers located on the drilling rig that are constantly maintained and can be instantly deployed in the event of an emergency. In the last 15 years, shallow water operators have drilled over 11,000 wells and only spilled a combined total of 15 barrels of oil in blowouts.

Nevertheless, BOEM continues to hold shallow water drilling permits hostage, issuing only a handful of permits for new wells in five months. One-third of the shallow water rigs in the Gulf have gone idle, and some have already begun to leave the Gulf for other parts of the world. According to a report by Southern Methodist University, 40,000 American jobs have been put in jeopardy. Shallow water permits have languished in the BOEM, despite the fact that these are low-risk wells involved mostly in natural gas exploration in mature, predictable and known reservoirs -- and are drilled using rigs with proven methods and blowout preventers that sit right on the rig.

The Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition is working on behalf of the 40,000 workers employed throughout our industry companies, and the 180,000 people directly employed in oil and gas exploration along the Gulf Coast. The floating factories of the shallow water drilling industry support the jobs of countless welders, fabricators, equipment manufacturers, longshoremen, helicopter pilots, truckers, restaurant owners and supply boat captains all across the nation. We don't want a bailout from the federal government. We just want to go back to work. Until we get decisive action on permitting, this de facto moratorium will continue, job losses will mount, and our nation's economic and energy security will be put at risk.