Interior head: OCS plan on the table.
Salazar 'likely' to ditch Bush drilling plan
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar indicated today the plan to open the US outer continental shelf to drilling left on his desk by the Bush administration likely will be scrapped.
That plan would open the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts for drilling.
Instead, Salazar said the expansion of offshore oil drilling should be worked out with Congress as part of a broad energy blueprint, in an Associated Press report.
Salazar declined to single out any waters considered automatically off limits to oil exploration but indicated the current plan is all but dead.
Instead, he said he wants to work with Congress on "a plan that makes sense." And he said while some offshore waters are appropriate for energy development, "there are others that are not."
"It seems to me the appropriate place to address the OCS and issues like royalty reform would be in the context of an energy bill," said Salazar, referring to outer continental shelf development and an overhaul of the way his department collects royalties from drilling in federal waters.