President Obama's Interior Secretary said today he's going to extend a public comment period on a proposed 5-year plan for oil and gas development on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, conduct a study and hold four regional conferences.

"To establish an orderly process that allows us to make wise decisions based on sound information, we need to set aside the Bush Administration’s midnight timetable for its OCS drilling plan and create our own timeline,” Ken Salazar said.  

He said the Bush administration -- which rolled back the ban on offshore drilling and called for those areas to be opened -- didn't provide the new administration with enough time for public review or for "wise decisions on behalf of taxpayers."

“The additional time we are providing will give states, stakeholders, and affected communities the opportunity to provide input on the future of our offshore areas,” he said. “The additional time will allow us to restore an orderly process to our offshore energy planning.”

He said there's also not enough information about what resources may lurk offshore.

“In the biggest area that the Bush Administration’s draft OCS plan proposes for oil and gas drilling - the Atlantic seaboard, from Maine to Florida - our data on available resources is very thin, and what little we have is 20 to 30 years old,” he said. “We shouldn’t make decisions to sell off taxpayer resources based on old information.”