range of impacts. Also, certain impacts beyond the regional boundaries are 

 recognized in the analysis; for example analyses of proposed leases along 

 the Atlantic coast have recognized services provided from established 

 industry bases along the Gulf Coast. 



There is considerable disagreement over what are the appropriate 

 regional boundaries for a study. One study of a mid-Atlantic lease sale, 

 for example, analyzed impact within a region including "southern New Jersey, 

 the New York City-Newark Metropolitan area, Philadelphia and surrounding 

 counties, and the two northernmost counties of Delaware" [2]. A different 

 study of the same lease sale established a region that included "the 

 coastal zones (up to 150 miles inland) of North Carolina, Virginia, 

 Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and the New York City 

 metropolitan area and Long Island" [2]. A third analysis covered coastal 

 counties in "New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and 

 Virginia" [2]. 



Definition of regional boundaries also strongly affects studies of 0CS- 

 related facilities such as platform fabrication yards, refineries, or 

 combinations of several inter-connected facilities. For such major 

 facilities, the region may be very large. One study suggested that [1]: 



In general, the area should be large enough to include 

 the major fiscal impact--those associated with industrial 

 activity, with its employees, with the supporting 

 activities generated, and with their employees. For 

 practical purposes, it is probably sufficient to limit the 

 study area to one that includes 80 to 90 percent of the 

 commuting pattern. 



Regardless of the boundaries selected, the processes to be discussed 

 in this volume provide no help in predicting the location of the proposed 

 development within the region. Rather, these processes estimate the kinds 

 and amounts of development that will occur somewhere within the study region. 

 An important question about both primary and secondary developments is their 

 siting flexibility. 



A third limitation to this type of estimation process is that, in the 

 absence of specific proposals, it is important to consider whether 

 particular OCS-related facilities are likely to be built at all. One 

 measure of this factor can be called the feasibility threshold . It is 

 •elated to five basic variables that affect the decision of industry to 

 bi'ld new facilities: the extent of the oil and gas "find"; distance from 

 established company bases; available labor supply; transportation costs; and 

 the existence of onshore infrastructure. An onshore facility is more likely 

 to be built if the find is large, if the OCS area is a long way from 

 existing company bases, if skilled labor is available locally, if the cost 

 of transporting the needed items from other bases is high, and if other 

 industrial support services already are available in the area. 



