One of the pillars of Project Independence, President Nixon's program for U.S. self-sufficiency in energy supplies by 1980, is the exploitation of hitherto untapped reserves of oil and gas believed to lie under the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). So far, OCS drilling has occurred only in the Gulf of Mexico, off the shores of Texas and Louisiana, and off the coast of California. Lease sales now underway for parcels off the Gulf coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida will bring the total OCS area leased over the last 20 years to approximately 10 million acres. In his energy message to Congress on January 23, 1974, the president announced his intention to direct the Secretary of the Interior to make 10 million additional acres available for leasing in 1975, but deferred final judgment on opening the Atlantic and Alaskan OCS to leasing pending an assessment by the Council on Environmental Quality of the environmental impacts of oil and gas development in these areas as yet untouched by drilling. Since the Atlantic and Alaskan OCS are clearly intended to bear a large portion of the increased leasing program, the president's request of April 18, 1973, for an environmental assessment was a commendable step toward integrating ecological factors into what threatened to be a purely energy-oriented decisionmaking process.

The CEQ study was presented to the president on April 18, 1974, and represents the first systematic attempt to investigate the environmental effects of resource development in these virgin OCS areas. Its basic thrust is to categorize, evaluate, and rank the environmental risks connected with drilling in selected sites and to suggest ways in which these risks can be minimized, without specifically recommending where or when oil and gas development should or should not be allowed to proceed.The study asserts the general principle that development should be allowed at a particular site when and if it is determined that the benefits to be obtained outweigh the environmental risks involved. Where the risks outweigh the benefits, development should not move ahead until the risks can be lowered to an acceptable level.