WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a proposal to open up coastal waters from Virginia to Georgia for oil and gas drilling.
At the same time, the administration will ban drilling in Alaska in some portions of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.
Opening the Eastern Seaboard to oil companies is a prize the industry has sought for decades and is a blow to environmental groups. They argue that the move would put the coasts of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia at risk for an environmental disaster like the BP spill that struck the Gulf Coast in 2010, when millions of barrels of oil washed ashore after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
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The industry also contends that it has learned lessons from the 2010 oil spill. Although no new laws governing offshore drilling safety have been passed since then, the big companies say the spill led to tighter industry standards that are designed to avoid such catastrophes.
BP is already facing a record $13.7 billion in potential fines under the Clean Water Act for its role in the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Despite the risks posed by offshore drilling, lawmakers in Virginia and other Southeastern states have pushed to open up their waters to oil companies, lured by the prospect of new revenues. Both of Virginia’s Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, support drilling off their state’s coast.
