U.S. offshore drilling ban to limit oil, gas exploration: expert
June 23, 2019 – Media MentionA plan to ban offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and other coastal areas of the United States will dramatically limit future oil drilling and exploration opportunities, an expert has said.
"This would probably not affect existing drilling, but it would foreclose future projects, which would necessarily reduce the sources from which potential spills may occur," Noah Perch-Ahern, a partner who practices environmental law with the firm of Greenberg Glusker, told Xinhua on Friday.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a plan this week which will ban drilling the part of the Gulf of Mexico and in the waters near U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The primary concern is to prevent another oil spill like the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. That oil spill contaminated beaches along the coasts of many southern states including Texas, Louisiana and Alabama.