Plan to Limit California Offshore Drilling Hit

For the first time since President Reagan took office in 1981, the House on Wednesday passed an Interior Department appropriations bill without a ban on oil exploration off much of the California coast.

The measure, which now goes to the Senate, passed 270 to 143.

However, language that will accompany the bill--a proposal by Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel to sharply limit offshore oil exploration until the year 2000--led some California Republicans to complain Wednesday that Hodel has sold them out.

Eleven of the state’s 18 GOP congressmen released a letter to Reagan urging that Hodel abandon the proposal, which was drafted in summerlong talks with a bipartisan group of state lawmakers that included Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) and Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.).

The lawmakers complained in a Capitol Hill press conference that Hodel had not consulted them on the drilling restrictions, which they said threaten the nation’s energy security, economic growth and trade balance.

One lawmaker whose district is targeted in the Hodel proposal for new oil drilling, Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-long Beach), complained that the plan places the environmental needs of Northern California sea otters above those of surfers and other beachgoers in his area.

The offshore drilling proposal, which is included in a non-binding legislative report on the Interior appropriations bill, would open to oil exploration about 1,000 of the 58,000 square miles of offshore lands where oil drilling has been banned by Congress. Drilling in the remaining areas would continue to be banned until the year 2000.

Hodel and California lawmakers struck the bargain to avert a bitter political fight over extending the congressional drilling ban for a fifth straight year. Both Hodel and the legislators say the agreement is tentative, and Hodel plans to tour the California coast late this month to seek public and industry comment on the proposal before making it final.

The disgruntled GOP lawmakers said Wednesday, however, that the agreement shifts the environmental risks of new exploration to a few restricted areas, while leaving most of the state’s most productive offshore oil fields untouched.

Lungren also criticized the proposal’s intent to ban drilling near San Diego. One of the chief GOP negotiators in the talks with Hodel was Rep. Bill Lowery, whose San Diego district would be exempted from future drilling under the agreement.