Bush mulls resumed energy drilling off Alaska:
President Bush is considering whether to lift the 17-year-old moratorium on energy drilling in the waters off southwestern Alaska, a White House spokeswoman said Sunday, which would allow oil and gas companies to try to tap into more than five trillion cubic feet of natural gas that lies beneath rich fishing grounds.
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Last summer the Interior Department recommended reopening several areas of the outer continental shelf, including the southern part of Bristol Bay, which lies just north of where the Aleutian Islands meet the Alaskan mainland, to energy exploration. The report said that 14 oil and gas companies had supported the idea. The department has estimated that such a move could create up to 11,500 jobs, part of what it describes as “net benefits” of $7.7 billion.
One principle of benefit-cost analysis is that, in an economy with full employment (i.e., low unemployment rate; e.g., the US economy), "new jobs" should not be counted as benefits. These "new jobs" will be extracted from other sectors of the economy. I wonder if the Interior Department study also counted these "lost jobs?"
