Senate Panel OKs Coastal Oil Survey

A Senate panel Thursday backed a study to determine how much oil and natural gas lies off the coasts, a step critics warned could lead to weakening the decades-old ban on new offshore drilling and complicate President Bush’s efforts to overhaul national energy policy.

The survey of offshore energy resources -- along with a controversial measure to give federal regulators final say over the location of coastal terminals to receive liquefied natural gas imports -- have emerged as issues as an energy bill heads to the Senate floor.

Bush has urged Congress to send him an energy bill by August. The House has approved a bill, and the Senate is expected to follow suit next month. But differences between the two versions could keep Bush from receiving a final product.

Neither bill would do much to provide immediate relief from high gasoline prices. They both include measures to promote domestic production of oil, gas, coal and nuclear power and to encourage conservation, establish rules to ensure the reliability of the electric grids and mandate greater use of ethanol in the nation’s gasoline supply.

The Senate bill also would authorize as much as $250 million over five years to provide rebates to consumers who purchase energy-efficient appliances. And it would direct the president to implement measures to save 1 million barrels of oil a day by 2015.

The Senate energy committee sent its bill to the floor Thursday with strong support, 21-1. But that vote masked fights that are expected once the bill comes up for debate in mid-June.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is expected to try to strip the bill of the inventory of offshore gas resources because of concern it could lead to ending the 24-year moratorium on new offshore drilling.

Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) called the inventory a “step onto a slippery slope.”

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), recalling his immigrant past, said: “I have a real aversion to inventories, because I have a memory as a child in Cuba that preceding the confiscation of property by the government, they inventoried it first. So I have always taken a little bit of skeptical view about a benign inventory.”

Interest groups are watching the issue closely.

Richard A. Charter, co-chairman of the National Outer Continental Shelf Coalition, an environmental advocacy group, said an inventory could damage fish and other marine life because of explosive sonic blasts of air used to gather a seabed’s geologic profile.

But Jeff Eshelman of the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America said: “For too long, the debate about offshore drilling has been too heavy on emotions and too light on facts. The inventory will finally give policymakers and the public an actual accounting of the nation’s offshore oil and gas reserves. We deserve this kind of information to make the best, most rational decisions for the nation’s future energy needs.”

Eshelman said seismic technology is regularly used in the Gulf of Mexico to help companies find potential oil and natural gas deposits.

New offshore drilling is now banned except in a large part of the Gulf of Mexico and in areas off Alaska.

A similar survey was proposed in 2003 but was dropped from the energy bill. That bill passed the House but fell two votes short of overcoming a Senate filibuster because of a dispute over other issues.

The survey of offshore energy resources could stand a better chance of making it into a final bill this time because of surging prices.

Although there is no such provision in the House bill, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Thursday that such a survey is “probably a good thing.”

“The people of America have a right to know what they own,” said Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), who pushed for the assessment of offshore resources. “Then after they do, they can decide what they want to do.”

Some supporters of the survey acknowledged that they saw it as a step toward allowing states to opt out of the federal drilling moratorium in return for hundreds of millions of dollars from lease revenue.

The Virginia General Assembly earlier this year approved a bill aimed at opening its coast to natural gas production, but that measure was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner.

The Senate bill, like the House measure, includes the controversial provision that would give federal regulators final say over where liquefied natural gas terminals were built. The measure has drawn opposition from officials from coastal states, including California, where four such plants have been proposed.

State officials say the plants can pose safety risks and harm the environment.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the governors of five other coastal states sent a letter to senators urging that the bill provide “concurrent” federal and state authority over plant locations.