It is now more than a year since then President Nixon announced that the Outer Continental Shelf would be called upon to play a crucial role in implementing the newly formulated national policy of energy self-sufficiency. The Ford Administration, while warmly endorsing Project Independence, has tacitly conceded that the original target date of 1980 was unrealistic and replaced it with 1985. In keeping with this tempering of initial high hopes, the original intention of doubling the OCS acreage under lease for oil and gas exploration by leasing 10 million acres in 1975, much of it in hitherto unexploited areas off the Atlantic and Alaskan coasts, has also benn quietly dropped.

Although no figure has been set to replace the original 10-million-acre goal, the Interior Department apparently hopes to lease as much acreage as can now be exploited, given the present shortage of drilling rigs, tubular steel, and skilled drilling labor. The numerical leasing target may have diminished, but the Department's ardor for immediate OCS exploitation has not. The question is no longer whether drilling in virgin OCS areas will be allowed; such an eventuality is at this point all but a foregone conclusion. The real questions now are when and where drilling will be permitted, the kind of institutional and legal framework within which such drilling will take place, and the specific means by which the risks of environmental harm connected with such activity can be mitigated.