Axios

The Interior Department is floating draft plans that would greatly expand the coastal regions made available for oil and natural gas drilling, department officials said Thursday. The plan for lease sales between 2019-2024 would open the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and revive lease sales in Arctic waters off Alaska's coast.

Why it matters: It's a sharp reversal of Obama-era policies that keep offshore leasing almost entirely limited to the Gulf of Mexico, which currently accounts for nearly all U.S. offshore production. The proposed Atlantic and Pacific coast sales would be the first offerings in those regions in decades.

It's kind of a glass half-empty or half-full question right now when it comes to Tesla's mass-market Model 3 electric sedan. As we reported in the Axios stream yesterday, the Silicon Valley automaker reported a jump in Model 3 production in the fourth quarter, producing 2,425 of the mainstream priced cars compared to a paltry 260 in the prior quarter.

Why it matters: Tesla's ability to address what CEO Elon Musk has called "production hell" and churn out the Model 3 at scale is vital for the company's future in the increasingly competitive EV market.

The consultancy Wood Mackenzie predicts that oil industry investment this year in finding and assessing conventional new discoveries will slip again despite the improved price outlook.

One reason it matters: As global crude consumption keeps rising, some experts say that more robust industry investment in finding and developing conventional sources of oil will be needed to avoid a precarious supply situation in a few years, despite the rise of shale.

Space observatories and probes will be launched. Gene editing is expected to move further into medicine. And immunotherapies for treating cancer need to be evaluated to figure out how they work and whether more people can benefit from them.

Here are seven science stories to watch for in 2018.

New data: Tesla produced 2,425 of its mainstream-priced Model 3 sedans in the fourth quarter of 2017 and delivered 1,550 of the vehicles, the company said today. Wall Street was unimpressed, sending down Tesla shares by 2% in after-hours trading.

The jump in output follows a disappointing third quarter for the much-heralded car unveiled last year. Tesla produced just 260 in Q3, badly missing its goal of 1,500.

• "During Q4, we made major progress addressing Model 3 production bottlenecks, with our production rate increasing significantly towards the end of the quarter," the company said in its latest quarterly update for the production and delivery of its various vehicles released Wednesday afternoon.

Why it matters: Tesla's ability to address what CEO Elon Musk has called "production hell" and churn out the Model 3 at scale is vital for the company's future in the increasingly competitive EV market. But the drop in its share price suggests that the market cannot forget that Musk had originally promised to deliver 5,000 Model 3s a week by the end of 2017.