In a proposal issued the week before Katrina, the Department of the Interior announced it wanted to open the outer continental shelf (600 to 9, 500 feet underwater) to exploration in the next round of lease auctions.
The recent energy bill opened the door to this resource by directing Interior to conduct a complete inventory of reserves along the shelf, including the use of cutting-edge 3-D seismic imaging techniques.
The Department of Interior which controls permits for drilling on federal onshore lands and the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is also exerting a big influence upon fracking operations.