The New York Times
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House Vote Stalls Gulf Drilling Plan

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
June 22, 2001

The House voted today to temporarily bar the Interior Department from leasing the waters off the Florida Panhandle for oil and gas exploration, a setback to the Bush administration's energy strategy.

In a 247-to-164 vote, with 70 Republicans ignoring appeals from the White House and their own leadership, the House approved the measure to postpone for six months new leasing arrangements for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Supporters of the restriction, including Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, the president's brother, said they would push to make it a lasting one.

"The Congress sent a very powerful message to the president today that he needs a more balanced approach toward energy in Florida and throughout the country," said Representative Jim Davis, a Florida Democrat who sponsored the measure with a Republican colleague, Joe Scarborough, also from Florida.

In a second vote, House lawmakers passed a measure to prevent the administration from developing sites to extract oil, gas or coal in lands designated as national monuments.

Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton has argued that there are significant reserves, including low-sulfur coal, in several of the 19 national monuments designated by President Bill Clinton.

In addition, lawmakers struck down an Interior Department measure to suspend new rules requiring mining companies to pay for environmental cleanups. It also turned back a move to weaken standards for ground and surface water.

The measures were amendments to an $18.9 billion spending bill for the Interior Department, which passed the House and now goes to the Senate.

The department had intended to decide on the leases this fall, and it could still follow that schedule, putting them up for sale at year's end, after the ban expires.

But environmental groups rejoiced at the actions, which they said demonstrated growing unease across party lines with Mr. Bush's goal of stepping up energy production in areas that are ecologically sensitive or favored for recreation.

William H. Meadows, the president of the Wilderness Society, said the House had delivered conservationists a "tremendous victory" and had issued a warning to President Bush.

"The House said, loud and clear, that Capitol Hill does not agree with his environmental views," Mr. Meadows said.

Congress has already stymied Mr. Bush's plan to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration, which the president contended was necessary to reduce American dependence on foreign energy suppliers.

The Republican defections were all the more striking because the White House had lobbied hard to open the gulf to oil and gas exploration.

Representative Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the Republican whip, fought vigorously on behalf of more drilling.

Mr. DeLay denounced as "radical" the measure to curtail drilling in the gulf.

He said it would undermine efforts to address the growing needs of Americans who are already experiencing an energy shortage in California and elsewhere.

"This amendment makes about as much sense as shutting down all exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and weakens our energy security," Mr. DeLay said.

President Bush, promoting his energy plan in St. Paul, advocated more drilling, saying, "As long as cars and trucks run on gasoline, we will need oil, and we should produce more of it at home."

A White House spokeswoman, Nicolle Devenish, suggested that the administration would seek to overturn the House action, but she did not elaborate.

"These are matters we are continuing to review," Ms. Devenish said, "and we will continue to work with Congress to make sure that the president's priorities are reflected in the final appropriations bill."The battle over the gulf waters stirred the fierce opposition of most Florida politicians.

Contending that an oil spill could cause lasting damage to the state's popular white sand beaches, the entire Florida delegation voted to keep drilling away from the coast, with the exception of Representative John Mica, a Republican.

"Few other issues so completely unite Floridians," Governor Bush wrote in a letter earlier this year to the administration.

Florida's senators have introduced legislation to establish a permanent moratorium on offshore drilling and to buy back current leases off Florida's coast.

The Senate, under Democrats' control, is expected to adopt a strategy even more to conservationists' liking than the House.

The gulf lease site, known as Section 181, stretches within 30 miles of Pensacola, and about 200 miles from Tampa Bay, Florida officials said. The Interior Department has predicted that the site contains 396 million barrels of oil, about a three-week supply for the country.

Unlike the western and central gulf, where drilling supplies about 30 percent of the country's natural gas and 20 percent of its oil, the eastern gulf has remained effectively shielded from offshore drilling even though it has never been permanently closed to exploration.

The energy industry had relied on Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney - both of whom have been oil company executives - to open new sites for development. They warned that the nation must find new sources to meet its energy appetite.

Industry officials noted that their operations elsewhere in the gulf had been carried out for over half a century without a disastrous spill.

"We are obviously disappointed," said Juan R. Palomo, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute. "We have worked very hard to get out the story of how we can explore the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and have done so with no harm to the environment. We hoped that if we did our jobs, the result would have been different."