Ocean Policy

It probably escaped everyones notice that President Obama issued a memorandum to form the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force back in June. This policy making group is lead by the White House Council on Environmental Quality. (and one of his czars)

Well, the Task Force has issued an interim report and 68 of our congressmen are at odds with it claiming it leans too far in environmental policy and not enough in economic policy, especially recovery of hydrocarbons.

A copy of the letter this bi-partisan group sent to the task force can be found here.

A link to the web page for the task force, including a link to sent in public comments, is here.

I encourage you to read the report and offer comments. At least take a moment and scan the list of commenters and see if you agree with what they say. Be warned, this task force is the group that will set ocean policy in this administration, and developing offshore mineral resources is not a priority for them.

While you are pondering that, bear in mind that the MMS, who oversees oil development in the federal OCS, and collects royalties from the oil companies, is the second largest source of money to the federal government after the IRS. That's oil money!