Description:

Subtitle: Oil and Gas Leasing and Conservation on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Written by Walter J. Mead and Asbjorn Moseidjord, and Dennis D. Muraoka, and Philip E. Sorensen.
The U.S. Government owns almost a billion acres of land on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). This land may have as much as 40 billion barrels of oil and 230 trillion cubic feet of natural gas remaining to be put to profitable use. At the same time, development of these resources raises many sensitive environmental issues.

In an attempt to address some of these concerns, in 1978 Congress mandated the use of alternative bidding methods to the conventional cash bonus bidding system for OCS oil and gas leasing. Today these policies are universally criticized by developers, environmentalists, and state and local governments. In Offshore Lands, the authors employ exhaustive economic analysis to examine
the various problems involved in the process by which firms bid for leases on OCS tracts, particularly as they affect resource conservation. Oil spills and
other environmental concerns, and political pressures from adjacent states and localities are also discussed.

In a comprehensive and timely analysis of OCS resources, Offshore lands provides proposals for reform, including the extension of private property and liability law to OCS lands, and OCS revenue sharing with states and municipalities.