Activists push to reinstate drilling ban

Washington —- Environmental advocates on Wednesday urged Congress to reinstate a broad moratorium on offshore oil drilling, but Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) said “the ship may have already sailed.”

Rahall, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said the political reality is that the broad moratorium across 85 percent of the country’s Outer Continental Shelf —- lifted by Congress last fall —- is unlikely to be reimposed.

But Rahall, who opened the first of three hearings on offshore drilling, said Congress may need to establish protective buffer areas and place certain regions —- including some waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts —- off limits.

“If we are going to start drilling in new areas offshore, we’re going to have to be aware of what the trade-offs are,” said Rahall. The “vast majority” of Outer Continental Shelf oil resources already are in federal waters, available for leasing, he said.

The hearing came a day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered a review of offshore oil and gas development, scrapping a sweeping blueprint for expanded offshore drilling proposed in the Bush administration’s final days. While not ruling out expansion of some offshore drilling, Salazar promised greater emphasis on using coastal waters to generate energy from wind, the sun and waves.

At the House hearing, actor Ted Danson, a founder of Oceana, an ocean advocacy group, said offshore drilling is “flirting with disaster” because of potential oil spills not only at drilling rigs, but also in transporting the oil produced.

Tourism and fishing industry spokesmen from North Carolina, Florida and California said they are worried offshore drilling would impact billions of dollars a year fishing and tourism industries.

“We cannot afford any kind of spill,” D.T. Minich, executive director of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater, Fla., visitor’s bureau, told the House panel.

W.F. “Zeek” Grader Jr., executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association, said he’s not so worried about spills, but that exploratory seismic activities and drilling rigs would “kill fish… scare fish and make it impossible for fishing operations to be held.”

But Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, top Republican on the House Resources Committee, said expanded offshore drilling is “about creating good American jobs” and reducing dependence on foreign oil and the OPEC oil cartel.