An effort to open up the California Coast to offshore oil drilling was defeated last week, but some Republicans in Congress say they plan to keep pushing it.
A House panel voted 9-6 last week in a party-line vote against lifting the 27-year-old offshore drilling moratorium, in a battle reported mostly by the redOrbit blog and Media General News Services.
An amendment by Rep. John E. Peterson, R-Pa., would have opened drilling off the Pacific Coast as well as Florida”s Gulf Coast and the coasts of North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina in now-protected areas 50 to 200 miles offshore.
Richard Charter of Defenders of Wildlife, wrote to the newspaper several times to report that some Democrats were on the fence.
Republicans have seized drilling for more oil as a solution to high gas prices. Critics say new oil found wouldn”t change gas prices for more than a decade. Taking the last oil fields in the United States would rob the next and future generations, who might be willing and able to mix serious conservation measures with drilling, critics say.
In 2006, the Minerals Management Service estimated that undiscovered, technically recoverable resources on the entire outer continental shelf total 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
But subcommittee Chairman Norm Dicks, D-Wash., countered that MMS also reports that 82 percent of natural gas reserves and 79 percent of its oil reserves in the outer continental shelf are in areas that are already open to drilling, redOrbit reported.
Petersen argued that opening up vast new oil fields in the United States would send a signal to speculators that oil prices could dip in the future and thus slow intense trading in futures.
Democrats have suggested better regulation of the U.S. commodity trading markets for oil futures.
The vote blocks the effort in subcommittee, keeping it away from a vote by the entire House.
President George W. Bush and Republican presidential nominee John McCain both jumped into the offshore drilling fray this week. McCain told MSNBC he will support lifting the federal ban on offshore oil drilling and let states decide the issue. He laid out the plan in detail on Tuesday to a group of Houston oil company executives, according to reports in national newspapers. States that lifted the 27-year-old ban would be given federal grants and other incentives.
Bush announced plans for a speech this week making elimination of the ban on drilling a top priority.
The pro-drilling stance puts McCain at odds with California”s top Republican, Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has opposed drilling for oil and gas off the coast.
