U.S. Will Restudy Offshore Oil Test Sites, Hodel Says

Specific locations where oil and gas exploration has been proposed off the California coast will be restudied, Interior Secretary Donald Hodel said Wednesday.

Hodel, midway in an 11-city series of town hall meetings on offshore exploration, said comments he has received indicate that the 150 tracts proposed for exploration may not be the best ones for that purpose.

He noted that Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) indicated Tuesday that environmental groups that helped negotiate a compromise on exploration will seek a change in tracts.

Raises a Question

“That opens the door, I think, for me to raise the question from a resource standpoint: Do we have the wrong 150?” Hodel commented during a telephone interview after a session in Bakersfield.

The preliminary agreement, which still needs approval from Congress, would ban leases on 6,310 tracts covering 56,800 square miles off the California coast until the year 2000.

The 150 tracts covering 1,350 square miles proposed for exploration include 99 tracts off Humboldt County. The rest are scattered south from San Luis Obispo, Hodel said.

The Interior secretary’s comments were a departure from previous assessments made during the California tour. Two days ago, Hodel told a meeting in San Rafael that he was optimistic that the plan would survive despite pressure from the oil industry and opposition from the Department of Energy.

“I don’t see it unraveling,” Hodel said. “I’m optimistic. I think we have to seek consensus.”

Oil industry officials who attended the Bakersfield session opposed the agreement in its present form “because there are too few good tracts in it,” Hodel said.

He noted that officials of environmental groups who attended earlier sessions in the San Francisco Bay area Tuesday “really oppose all drilling, but are generally supportive, on balance, that the preliminary agreement is best.”

Besides raising the issue of whether the best tracts will be developed, Hodel said the hearings have clarified his thinking on environmental problems.

View Is Crucial

“I have not heard any new (environmental) issues, and it appears that the ultimate issue--the one that can’t be dealt with by stipulation or other protective means--is the view,” Hodel said.

“I believe we can meet the air quality and fish and endangered species, sea otter-type of issues.”

Fishermen and environmentalists from the Sierra Club and Greenpeace have qualified their support with demands for strict controls on air quality. They also called for pipelines to shore and substituting some tracts that might threaten fishing near the Eel River and sea otters off San Luis Obispo.