Offshore Oil Moratorium

I agree that a year-to-year moratorium is not the most sensible way to plan offshore oil exploration. Other than that, the viewpoint of the editorial and Hodel’s tentative agreement on leasing offshore California are shortsighted, provincial and a dangerous precedent in the formulation of the national energy policy.

It is shortsighted in that, allowing for discovery and first production delays, the possible energy reserves will not be available to us until five to eight years after a “legitimate national energy emergency” is identified or until 2005 to 2008 if we are unable to identify it. This could prove an expensive luxury in light of the projected world oil shortages for the 1990s, the instability in the Arabian Gulf, the falling production rates in the Soviet Union and the recent overtures by the Soviets to the Arabian Gulf states.

It is provincial to assume what is good for a special interest group within the California delegation to the House is good for the state or the country. (Not all the Californian delegates were consulted before the agreement, and 11 of their number have since come out in opposition.)

It sets a dangerous precedent for the establishment of an effective national energy policy by allowing a partial delegation from one state to have a significant impact on our national energy policy via closed-door politics.

DAVID J. RICHARDS

Thousand Oaks