President Bush said Wednesday that Congress should allow for expanded U.S. offshore oil drilling and called for opening up more areas for domestic energy exploration.
The Energy Information Administration, part of the Department of Energy, estimates that about 75 billion barrels of oil are off limits to development, and that about 21% of that, or 16 billion barrels, is covered by the offshore drilling ban, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
The offshore drilling moratorium was first enacted in 1982 and has been renewed by Congress every year since then, the Times reported. It prohibits oil and gas leasing on most of the continental shelf, three to 200 miles off the U.S. shore.
The president said that Congress should open more of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to exploration, which he said could produce an additional 10 billion barrels of oil.
He touted developing oil shale, saying that the high cost of current oil makes it a more economic resource than in the past.
Bush also called for more development of the U.S. refinery industry, saying he was proposing measures to improve the refinery permitting process.
