Oil and gas industry representatives are concerned that problems with the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) are not being fixed by Congress despite the current opportunity to do so with the required reauthorization of CZMA and the urgent pleas by industry and the Bush administration that changes must be made to remove a substantial impediment to the nation’s energy supply.

In a letter to Wayne Gilcrest, chairman of the House Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans, all of the major producer associations expressed their desire for changes to the current legislation, which will reimplement the CZMA. The current act has “produced regulatory uncertainty and unreasonably impeded outer continental shelf exploration and production projects as well as the siting of offshore energy infrastructure,” they said in their letter. While not opposing the existence of the CZMA, the associations said abuse of its provisions by the states has severely restricted development of the nation’s energy resources.

“Overlapping jurisdictions of multiple government agencies, coupled with conflicting federal laws (or conflicting interpretations of the statutes) have resulted in serious problems with the coastal zone management process,” they said. “Companies trying to find and develop offshore energy resources frequently encounter duplicative requirements that result in costly delays in the regulatory process even when these activities would not adversely impact states’ coastal zones.”

“If you submit a plan of exploration, a state can mischievously request more and more information — it never is enough — and all the while hold up your plan,” said Thomas Michels, spokesman for the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA). “There isn’t any finality to the process where a company can get a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer on whether or not they will be allowed to develop their lease, which they’ve already invested enormous sums of money into. It really has become a stall tactic. It discourages leasing; it discourages energy development in the offshore areas, and that causes problems with our domestic energy supply.”

In an effort to do away with the numerous problems posed by the CZMA, the group of associations, which include the NOIA, the American Petroleum Institute, the Natural Gas Supply Association, the Independent Petroleum Association of American and several other groups urged Congress to adopt several amendments in H.R. 3577:

“We feel if they are going to reauthorize this act they should really take a hard look at some of these problems and make some very minor changes to it so that we can have some certainty there for our exploration and production projects,” said Michels.

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