Reforming the offshore oil and gas program: rediscovering the publicʹs interests in the outer continental shelf lands

This article diagnoses the outer continental shelf (OCS) offshore oil development conflict in the USA in order to identify policy reforms for more consensual OCS decision-making. OCS development is characterized by asymmetric costs and benefits, regional socio-economic and cultural diversity, extreme environmental and geological uncertainty, and a capital-intensive market structure. These contextual features have been filtered by three primary institutional factors that explain the OCS conflict: (1) high centralization; (2) formal legal-bureaucratic pluralism; and (3) a conflict between government and environmental risk perceptions of OCS development. The article recommends three reforms: decentralizing authority to regional task forces; regional integration of the costs and benefits of OCS development; and integrating the leasing and exploration phases of OCS development as public decisions.