ATA Asks Interior to Boost Offshore Oil Leases

In a letter outlining the trucking industry’s critical need for fuel, American Trucking Associations asked the Department of the Interior to approve offshore drilling leases.

“The offshore leasing program is a critically important component of the supply side of a comprehensive energy strategy,” said the Sept. 21 letter signed by Bob Costello, ATA’s chief economist.

The letter was one of thousands of public comments sent in support of or in opposition to a proposed draft of the five-year Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas leasing program.

Opening “all available domestic resources to safe and environmentally responsible development,” the letter said, would boost supply, increase the nation’s security, produce jobs, enhance the economy and bring in billions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury.