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This is yet another example of boneheaded policy from the Bushies.
Reasons against this move have been well-diaried here, and include the facts that there are 1000s of acres of potential oilfields currently leased but unused by oil companies.
Wonders never cease.
Update: AP has a little more:
...by itself, the move will not lead to more drilling off America's coastline.
Congress must still lift its own legislative ban before offshore drilling can happen.
White House press secretary Dana Perino says Bush is acting now in hopes of spurring Congress to act. So far, lawmakers have shown no interest in doing so.
Update 2: Here's .more info from the EIA re: what the executive order provide(d) in addition to the Congressional ban:
In June 1990, President George H. W. Bush responded to concerns about preserving the ocean and coastal environment with a directive ordering the Department of Interior not to conduct leasing or preleasing activity in places other than the Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and limited parts of Alaska offshore until 2000. The moratorium affected virtually all of the coasts of the North Atlantic, California, Washington, Oregon, New England, Mid-Atlantic and the Northern Aleutian Basin. It also included the Eastern Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Southwest Florida, an area extending 700 miles from Baldwin County, Alabama, southward to the Florida Keys.
Bush's directive expanded a moratorium Congress imposed in 1982 that removed 736,000 acres off the coast of northern and central California from leasing for oil and gas exploration and production. The concern for possible environmental damage and social disruption caused by both routine activities and accidents, such as oil spills, resulted in local pressure to prevent these possibilities by removing areas from the lease schedule. In 1998, President Clinton extended Bush's Executive Order until June 2012.
Here's what a true patriot says about this proposal. I can't do better: