WASH­ING­TON-More than two-thirds of off­shore leas­es in the Gulf of Mex­i­co are sit­ting idle, nei­ther pro­duc­ing oil and gas, nor be­ing ac­tive­ly ex­plored by the com­pa­nies who hold the leas­es, ac­cord­ing to a De­part­ment of In­te­ri­or re­port re­leased yes­ter­day.Those in­ac­tive swaths of the Gulf could po­ten­tial­ly hold more than 11 bil­lion bar­rels of oil and 50 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas, In­te­ri­or said in the re­port ob­tained by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma or­dered the re­port ear­li­er this month amid pres­sure to curb ris­ing gaso­line prices fol­low­ing the in­sta­bil­i­ty in the oil-rich Mid­dle East. The White House said Oba­ma would out­line his plans for Amer­i­ca's en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in a speech in Wash­ing­ton to­day.The in­ef­fi­cien­cies de­tailed in the In­te­ri­or De­part­ment re­port al­so ex­tend to on­shore oil and gas leas­es on fed­er­al lands, with 45 per cent of those leas­es deemed in­ac­tive.The de­part­ment said it is cur­rent­ly ex­plor­ing op­tions to pro­vide com­pa­nies with ad­di­tion­al in­cen­tives for more rapid de­vel­op­ment of oil and gas re­sources from ex­ist­ing and fu­ture leas­es.

"These are re­sources that be­long to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, and they ex­pect those sup­plies to be de­vel­oped in a time­ly and re­spon­si­ble man­ner and with a fair re­turn to tax­pay­ers," In­te­ri­or Sec­re­tary Ken Salazar said in the re­port.Re­pub­li­cans have sought to place the blame for high gas prices on Oba­ma's poli­cies, point­ing to the slow pace of per­mit­ting for new off­shore oil wells in the wake of last sum­mer's mas­sive Gulf spill and an Oba­ma-im­posed mora­to­ri­um on new deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration, though ex­perts say more do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion wouldn't im­me­di­ate­ly im­pact prices.

Wash­ing­ton Rep Doc Hast­ings, Re­pub­li­can chair­man of the House Nat­ur­al Re­sources Com­mit­tee, said yes­ter­day that he would in­tro­duce three bills to in­crease off­shore en­er­gy pro­duc­tion, in­clud­ing one that would lift the drilling mora­to­ri­um and re­quire the ad­min­is­tra­tion to move for­ward with en­er­gy pro­duc­tion in ar­eas con­tain­ing the most oil and nat­ur­al gas re­sources.GOP lead­ers al­so hit hard on Oba­ma's com­ments last week in Brazil when he said the US wants to be a ma­jor cus­tomer for the huge oil re­serves Brazil re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered off its coast.Oba­ma has re­ject­ed the crit­i­cism of his en­er­gy poli­cies, say­ing that do­mes­tic oil pro­duc­tion rose to a sev­en-year high last year.

Oba­ma has long said that oil and gas re­main crit­i­cal com­po­nents of US en­er­gy pol­i­cy, while al­so pro­mot­ing clean en­er­gy tech­nolo­gies like wind, so­lar and nu­clear. In Jan­u­ary's State of the Union ad­dress, Oba­ma said he wants 80 per cent of US elec­tric­i­ty to be gen­er­at­ed by clean en­er­gy sources by 2035.Nu­clear pow­er has come un­der more in­tense scruti­ny in re­cent weeks af­ter an earth­quake and tsuna­mi in Japan se­vere­ly dam­aged a nu­clear pow­er plant there. De­spite the un­cer­tain­ty at that fa­cil­i­ty, Oba­ma says he re­mains com­mit­ted to de­vel­op­ing nu­clear pow­er in the US. (AP)