Truce on Offshore Oil

For the past 4 1/2 years the Reagan Administration has done everything it could--short of bringing in the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey--to open California’s coastal waters to offshore oil drilling. The Administration’s zest for offshore oil leasing, fortunately, has been blunted by a year-to-year moratorium by Congress on exploration or drilling of the waters offshore of the most environmentally sensitive portions of the coast.

The situation could not go on forever. During the first two years, the moratorium won support from some who were happy to do anything to spite then-Interior Secretary James G. Watt and his crude attempt to lease anything the oil boys wanted. Other factors, including lots of drilling on inland prospects, focused attention away from the outer continental shelf.

Conditions have changed dramatically and the oil industry has been conducting an intensive campaign in Congress to get the moratorium lifted. Perhaps the ban could have been sustained through the coming year, but no one could be sure. Almost certainly, it would have failed in 1986.

In any event, a year-to-year moratorium is not the most sensible way to plan offshore oil exploration if any exploration is to be done. Thus, conditions were right for a compromise. What was a pleasant surprise was that the new secretary of the Interior, Donald P. Hodel, was willing to make the sort of tentative agreement he did recently with U.S. House members from California.

Much to the chagrin of the oil industry, Hodel consented to put all but 150 of the 6,460 leasing tracts in the moratorium area off limits to leasing until the year 2000. (Each tract covers 5,760 acres). Of the 150 tracts to be leased, 99 would be in the Eel River Basin off Northern California; 22 off Santa Monica Bay; 14 in the Santa Maria Basin; 10 off Long Beach and Orange County, and 5 off Oceanside in San Diego County. Of 6,460 tracts covered by the moratorium, only about 2% would be eligible for leasing, most of it in Northern California.

There would be an escape clause. The ban on the 98% could be lifted in a legitimate national energy emergency. The wording of this clause is critical in writing a final agreement during the next 30 days. So, too, is California insistence that any drilling be done under stringent air pollution controls; that local governments control construction of onshore facilities, and that all oil be transported to shore via pipeline rather than ship or barge. Hodel said he will meet with state and local officials before making any final decision.

In a compromise so sweeping, not everyone will be happy. Some environmentalists contend that the agreement would be the first step to drilling in Santa Monica Bay itself. But the prospective lease area would be 20 to 23 miles offshore, and only one tract in the region covered by the moratorium, near the Ventura County line, would be opened to leasing.

Understandably, Orange County supervisors and city officials from Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach feel that they have been sold out. Huntington Beach once was eager for the oil business but now wants no more. The other cities are concerned about the first drilling platforms off their shores. Clearly they suffered because the Orange County delegation in the House was divided on the issue and because Rep. Robert E. Badham of Newport Beach, a professed foe of drilling, apparently saw no point in participating in the lengthy negotiations.

Perhaps the local officials from Orange County can persuade Hodel, but he has already offered, tentatively, 15 years of protection for extensive Southern California ocean floor that the oil industry dearly wants to probe with its drill bits. That, for the first time, is a major concession from the Administration (granted by an Oregonian: Hodel) about the importance of California’s coastal environment. And the cries of protest from the American Petroleum Institute indicate that the winners may be all the people of California.

essed in the months ahead. But it would provide health insurance for many who want the protection but have been denied it. The protection of health insurance is not a luxury; it is a necessity.