Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday the expansion of offshore oil drilling should be worked out with Congress as part of a broad energy blueprint and not independent action by his department.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Salazar indicated the drilling plan the Bush administration left on his desk likely will be scrapped. It would open the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts for drilling.
Salazar declined to single out any waters considered automatically off limits to oil exploration.
"There are places that are appropriate for exploration and development and there are places that are not," Salazar said in an interview in his spacious and historic office, with a fire roaring in the fireplace beneath a full-length painting of George Washington.
Salazar, who resigned as Colorado senator to join President Barack Obama's Cabinet, said he wants to work closely with Congress on "a plan that makes sense" for offshore oil and gas development, but that any expansion of drilling should be part of a comprehensive energy plan.
Congress last year failed to renew the long-standing moratorium on oil and gas exploration across 85 percent of the nation's Outer Continental Shelf, leaving all waters potentially open to drilling. Congressional Republicans and energy lobbyists have argued against even a partial reimposition by Congress of an offshore drilling ban.
Four days before leaving office, officials in the Bush administration issued a draft of a five-year drilling plan that calls for energy leases to be made available in both the Atlantic and Pacific waters, including vast areas that until recently had been off limits for a quarter century.
But Salazar indicated that plan is all but dead.
"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.
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