Worship of process.

The perfect storm of buzzwords. They develop procedures for making inquiries about whether inquiries should be made.

They study how they might ask questions. And when the answers are received they ask the questions. And someday limited leases are to be awarded for the purpose of gathering more data.

Then the limited leases will run for five years and will not allow anything to actually be developed.

And it is all interim. When the real rules become final:

"under an MMS regulatory program that is in development."

then

"Limited leaseholders wishing to conduct commercial activities will need separate authorization under the final rule that is adopted."

This is interesting:

"interested parties may continue to submit nominations, and MMS may act on other nominations that already have been received or are received in the future."

I'm guessing it means we can payoff our friends after others do the hard work.

Actually, this doesn't sound that bad. Keep in mind that ocean-based renewable energy is still developing some of its basic technologies (not so much in wind, but certainly in wave, tidal and current-based power-generation). AS THE STORY SAYS, this is something Congress ordered the MMS to do via the "EPAct" or Energy Policy Act in 2005. It's possible there's been foot-dragging by a White House occupied by two oil company execs, then again this is as big a deal the opening up of the trans-Mississippi West after the Civil War. It took time to come up with rules to divide the spoils of that conquest.
The oceans aren't as "vast and unoccupied" as many folks like to think. The best areas for sustainable power generation often happen to be already occupied by fishermen, shipping lanes in and out of ports, military and industrial dumps, military training areas (subsea, sea surface, and naval air exercises), and of course, the all-important weekend sailing set (think Nantucket and the windfarm in eternal permit-land there).

This type of permitting process is a necessary evil to channel the "political energies" of all these sorts of groups into something vaguely resembling a technically literate discussion of best-possible uses, maybe even create a "real-estate development" environment where creative types can engineer ways to combine multiple uses into the same areas. I've heard some stories about the offshore windfarms in Europe becoming better breeding grounds for fish -- if so, perhaps that sort of beneficial side-effect can be more consciously designed into the overall plans to allow more than one type of sustainable production in an area. So far, I don't think that's been an emphasis in offshore resource-management anywhere in the world.

I truly think offshore development of the Continent Shelves and other nearshore environments is the next big thing in civilization, comparable to the opening up of the temperate grasslands for grain production in the 1800s (that was a worldwide phenomenon, not often realized in US discussions of our Great Plains). Why should this opening up of the seas be so important? The seas concentrate solar and other sustainable powers, probably the most "energy-dense" sustainable energy forms around. They also concentrate it in areas very close to the energy markets -- most of the world's population, industry, etc. is close to the ocean coasts. They also present an opportunity to use some of that power to desalinate seawater, so opening up another resource-expansion opportunity (often using the same power-generation technology with only "slight" modification). These coastal areas are also (as mentioned above) among the most biologically active areas in the oceans, so they're already among the historically best fishing areas. That most likely means they're not only worth preserving for that capability, they're also the most likely areas for serious development of aquaculture, whether fish/ heterotroph-based, or sea-vegetation/ autotroph-based. Even if other areas further out show any promise for aquaculture or energy production, etc, that will only come later after the kinks (technologically, industrially and politically) have been worked out here, close to shore.

Keep in mind that energy-scarcity will also mean that cheap freight transportation will be more important than ever for maintaining viable costs of living, so ocean-based transport will remain or grow in importance. In fact, I suspect the ocean-current power generation technologies will have spin-offs to provide power-sources for ocean-shipping as well. So figuring out how to keep sealanes open between the power-fields will be a big concern. And if you haven't heard, the British Defense Ministry has already raised objections to offshore windfarms for messing up their mil radar stations' views of the North Sea... personally, I'd say post additional radar stations off-shore, but that's the sort of issue that land-use and zoning people have to deal with all the time on land, and the oceans' users are going to become increasingly familiar with as well.

It's a funny thing how everyone looks at the world through their own eyes, seeing the obvious ties between their issues and the land or areas around themselves. What few realize is how everyone else, with their own specialties and lives, can look at the very same landscape or seascape and see a totally different outlook on what's valuable, marginal or even threatening. The post-petroleum resource industries are still in the very beginning stages of discovering how to fit themselves into everyone else's worlds. While the importance of all this is obvious to anyone in the field, it isn't that obvious to others deep into their own specialty, especially if they've seen other competitors for "their" resources come and go. Proving that these technologies work is but one step in their development. Learning to fit these activities into the "worlds" of others is just one more step, as is fitting their production schedules into the demands of the markets. I've no doubt all these points will be figured out, but it usually takes way more time than anyone wants it to, and it also takes more time than most unfamiliar with all the issues "out there" realize.

Yes, there are political angles to this, but there are other, "real" issues to be dealt with as well. Please don't assume that this is all just political BS, for that can set you up for a very sad set of self-fulfilling prophecies. This sort of permitting process can be a fairly civilized way of taming the mutual discovery process as some people with very good, even world-saving ideas find out that their very worthwhile plans still manage to effect some other people, good people, in ways that have so far been entirely unanticipated. I hope that this process can become one where people interested in sustainable living can find each other and figure out how to not only get along, but improve the overall outcome.