Analysis : County ‘Lacked Clout’ to Block Drilling Plan

Officials of Orange County’s coastal cities are puzzling over what went wrong last week when a key House subcommittee cleared a compromise agreement with the Interior Department that would open 54 square miles off the county’s coastline to oil exploration.

Some city council members from coastal communities blame Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) for not alerting them in time to mount a letter-writing campaign against the plan, which was worked out between a small task force of House members, mostly Northern California Democrats, and Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel.

Badham strongly disagrees. “It would not have mattered. Nothing more could have been done,” he said in an interview last week.

Part of Interior Budget

The tentative agreement, which was accepted as part of the Interior Department’s proposed budget for fiscal 1986, would open areas totaling 1,350 square miles to offshore drilling, most of them in extreme Northern California. The 4-year-old moratorium on exploration off the state’s coastline would continue, however, for the remaining 58,000 square miles of ocean bottom.

The compromise represented a victory for Hodel, who had long sought an end to the moratorium.

Interviews with House members, members of their staffs and Interior Department officials last week found sharp disagreement over what political factors led to the agreement.

Badham Shunned Talks

Several sources said that the absence of unanimous opposition from Orange County’s all-Republican congressional delegation made the compromise easier to reach, but Badham said the split in the delegation had no effect.

Although Badham opposed the plan from the beginning, he was never a part of the negotiations that led to the compromise. He told proponents of the plan that he would “simply wait and see what develops.” Several of those interviewed said that as the compromise neared final action earlier last week, the situation was so delicate that any influence could have affected the outcome.

Democrats were involved early, and one Democratic congressman involved in the negotiations suggested there were partisan overtones in the plan’s adoption: “There are some congressmen--not just from my party--who are tired of Badham and other Orange County Republicans voting against our pet projects and our interests, and then seek self-serving decisions from government when it involves their own constituents and their own interests. Politicians have long memories. We don’t forget.”

One congressman who did get actively involved early in the negotiations with the Interior Department was Rep. Mel Levine (D-Los Angeles), an adamant opponent of drilling in the Santa Monica basin, which he represents. Under the compromise, that area would remain off limits to drilling.

The bottom line, Levine said, was that Orange County “lacked the political clout necessary to stop the plan.”

“It’s hard for anyone to believe that conservative Republicans in Orange County would genuinely support coastal protection when the oil companies and the Reagan Administration say they want to drill for more oil,” Levine said.

“Badham did tell us he would not participate in any compromise that sacrificed his district,” said one GOP House member who favors more oil drilling than was included in the compromise.

Talk of High Tech

“But Bob has also talked admiringly of new technology on the horizon that will make offshore oil rigs virtually invisible to his own coastline constituents. He believes that technology will be in place whenever new wells are drilled off his district. He already has oil wells in his district (in Huntington Beach). He said he would oppose anything we came up with, so he was written off. He played no significant role in the decisions that were made.”

Badham insists that he did all he could to defeat the plan, however. He said he was too busy fighting for appropriations in House Armed Services Committee hearings to keep constituents better informed about the offshore drilling issue.

Badham said he also warned officials of the coastal cities several months ago that the day was fast approaching “when new technology was going to mean that you would not see oil rigs from the coast, that everything would be under water, and we would lose one of our biggest arguments against offshore drilling.”

Badham explained how he learned of the negotiations: “One afternoon several weeks ago, some guys from Interior showed up in my office to brief me. They spread out some maps. This one guy said to me, ‘Now, Congressman, in case you didn’t know it, there are offshore oil rigs in your district.’

“I said, ‘Now, you’re not going to tell me what’s happening in my district. I know what’s going on in my district.’ ”

Tracts Drawn on Maps

Badham said his anger grew when the Interior Department staff showed him, on the maps, the areas off Newport Beach that were being proposed for oil exploration. According to both sides in the discussions, Badham then asked to see what tracts off Northern California would be included in the drilling proposal.

“They stood there and said they couldn’t do it. They refused,” Badham said. “They gave some excuse that some of the offshore tracts involved were in an environmentally sensitive preserve or something. I told them it seemed to me that a few Northern California House members, mostly Democrats, had worked out a nice little plan to protect themselves politically. I said I would have none of it, and that I’d simply wait and see what develops.”

The House members most directly involved at the beginning of the negotiations were Democrats Leon E. Panetta of Carmel Valley, Sala Burton of San Francisco and Barbara Boxer of Millbrae. Later, Levine, Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) and Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento) joined the talks.

In a meeting earlier this month between these House members and Hodel, Badham declared he could not participate “in a compromise that sacrifices my entire district, from Huntington Beach to Dana Point.”

According to several participants, Hodel replied that he understood Badham’s opposition and did not expect or hope to get his endorsement.

Republicans in on Talks

In fact, Hodel’s staff had briefed Badham only because Lowery insisted on it. Lowery was the key Republican negotiator, a staunch opponent of drilling off San Diego, where no oil drilling takes place and where none would be allowed under the plan. Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), whose district includes portions of coastal San Diego and Orange counties, was also included as a result of Lowery’s intervention.

Another coastal congressman, Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach), was left out of the negotiations. Lungren’s narrow district straddles the Los Angeles-Orange county line and extends from the Palos Verdes Peninsula to Seal Beach.

Lungren was unavailable for comment, but Lowery said that Lungren was quite upset about the compromise.

“He’s more than a little miffed,” Lowery said.

“We didn’t consult Lungren because he already has offshore wells in his district. We didn’t think he could possibly object to more,” said Bill Bittenberg, a member of Hodel’s staff. Lowery said he agreed with the decision not to brief Lungren, but now realizes it may have been a mistake.

Meanwhile, Levine, whose West Los Angeles district includes Santa Monica and Santa Monica Bay, made sure the compromise reached last week would keep the oil platforms far outside the bay.

Levine’s predecessor in that district was a Republican, Rep. Robert K. Dornan, who now represents central Orange County. Dornan also opposed drilling in the bay when he represented Santa Monica in the House three years ago.

Dornan did nothing to help Badham fight oil drilling off Orange County. In fact, he aided its proponents by inserting in the Congressional Record remarks calling for massive development of offshore oil reserves while Panetta, Lowery, Levine and others were hammering out last week’s compromise with Hodel.

“While I have had my past concerns on selected drilling sites,” Dornan stated in the Congressional Record, “we in the Congress should be absolutely firm. . . . We must have more, not less, oil and gas exploration, and the lease-sale programs should move forward at a faster pace.”

Dornan also inserted in the Congressional Record a magazine article advocating an end to all agreements that have restricted offshore oil development.

And Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), a longtime advocate of offshore drilling, attended a key meeting with other House members to make his views known, although he never specified which offshore areas would be considered for drilling.

Badham insists, however, that neither Dornan nor Dannemeyer would do anything to undermine his opposition to drilling off Orange County.

“I sat with both Dornan and Dannemeyer to discuss this very point, and they assured me they had done nothing to compromise me,” Badham told The Times.

Badham argues that Dornan’s and Dannemeyer’s positions wouldn’t matter anyway, since they were not directly involved in the debate before the House appropriations subcommittee on the interior, which last week accepted the tentative plan as a substitute for legislation that would have removed most of California’s coastal waters from the current moratorium.

“If the appropriations subcommittee wasn’t interested in my opinion, it’s certainly not going to listen to two congressmen who have inland districts and who aren’t even affected,” Badham says.

But Lowery, the San Diego Republican, isn’t so sure.

“We were operating in a tough environment last week,” Lowery recalls. “On the morning of the compromise, we had to go before the House Appropriations Committee, and it looked like we didn’t have the votes to avoid a flat-out vote against continuing even a partial moratorium. We were involved in fire fights that whole day. Anything could have influenced the situation.”

There was bipartisan support on the committee, under pressure from big oil-producing states such as Texas and Louisiana, for ending the ban on drilling off California.

“They didn’t want California to think it was so special,” Lowery says.

“Orange County didn’t matter one whit,” said one committee member. “The Democrats worked out their own plan in California, with some Republicans going along. We bought it.

“The damage was already done before the plan got to us.”