One of the issues the Virginia Energy Plan grapples with is development of Virginia’s offshore natural gas reserves. That’s an interesting issue, but not half as interesting as the questions arising from the map displayed above. Look at the wedge of continental shelf allocated to Virginia. How come it’s so small? Why does our share get narrower as it extends further into the ocean?
As the old real estate saying goes, they’re not making any more land. But the federal bureaucrats in the Minerals Management Service are handing out more land — it just happens to be underwater. This is no esoteric matter. These administrative boundaries govern which state has authority over offshore natural resources. In Virginia’s case, our slice contains an estimated 56 million barrels of oil and 327 million cubic feet of natural gas. If the boundaries were drawn differently, it could be a whole lot more.
How did Virginia wind up with the short end of the pie wedge? Here’s what the energy plan says: The Minerals Management Service established the boundaries using “an equidistance methodology for the purpose of managing offshore resources.”
The equidistance methodology expands the area attributable to states with convex coastlines and decreases the areas attributable to states, such as Virginia, with concave-shaped coastlines. Use of equidistant boundaries reduces the Commonwealth’s ability to influence decisions about offshore resource development.
Those offshore resources include not only oil and gas but sand, other minerals and renewable energy sources such as wind and tidal power, which in the long run could far exceed oil and gas in importance to the Virginia economy.
Virginia got the short end of the stick on this one. Administrative boundaries that extend due east would have yielded Virginia a much larger share of the continental shelf. Where were our congressmen when these decisions were being made? Is there some way to appeal the inequitable distribution of offshore territory and resources?