OFFSHORE: Hodel’s Comment : U.S. Will Restudy Location of Oil Test Sites, Hodel Says

The location of 150 tracts proposed for oil and gas development off California’s coast will be restudied, Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel said Wednesday.

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

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

“That opens the door, I think, for me to raise the question from a resource standpoint: Do we have the wrong 150?” Hodel commented in 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 from San Luis Obispo south, Hodel said.

There was disagreement among offshore oil drilling opponents over whether Hodel’s remarks constitute support for a change in the tentative agreement on oil and gas leasing that the secretary struck with members of California’s congressional delegation in mid-July.

“I think he (Hodel) was playing to the oil industry because they’ve come down harder on him than we have,” Laguna Beach City Councilman Robert F. Gentry said. “But I don’t think it’s terribly significant.”

Gentry, a leading voice in the coalition of four local coastal cities opposing more oil exploration off Orange County, made his comments after a coalition meeting in Newport Beach with Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy to seek his support on the issue.

Richard Charter, coordinator and Washington lobbyist for California local governments on the offshore drilling issue, said Hodel has stated clearly at other town hall meetings that he will “stand by the terms of the agreement.”

In hearings this week in the Northern California cities of Eureka, San Rafael and Santa Cruz, Hodel “said (he) was interested in tract-by-tract analysis, but he made it clear that it will be a minor adjustment rather than a major revamping of the compromise . . . a few swapped and moved around,” Charter said Wednesday.

“It’s important to realize that the California delegation has already kept (its) part of the bargain. The (House) Appropriations Committee removed (oil drilling) moratorium language protecting California in deference to this agreement,” Charter said. “Should Mr. Hodel now decide to violate the agreement in some way, he would probably be a former secretary of the Interior.”

Since Hodel began his California trip, local officials have expressed strong opposition to the tentative accord on environmental grounds, adding to opposition previously voiced by the oil industry, which has complained that the most productive tracts have been excluded.

“I think he expected some of this (opposition), but I don’t know if he expected the intensity of the reaction,” Interior spokesman Alan Levitt said Wednesday when reached by telephone.

Levitt said oil company opposition “brings into question the value of these 150 tracts. One concern that he has is, is he fulfilling his mandate under the Outer Continental Shelf Land Act?”

Requirements of Act

Levitt said the act requires the secretary to accelerate development of the nation’s offshore oil and gas reserves as well as to spread the environmental risks and economic benefits along all the nation’s coastlines.

Meanwhile, Panetta, one of the congressmen with whom Hodel reached the tentative agreement last month, said Wednesday that it was always understood that minor adjustments in the tracts could be made. He said he anticipates changes in the tracts near Oceanside and Newport Beach.

“But by no means is that intended to mean that there will be a renegotiation on all 150 tracts. I think any effort to do that would undermine the agreement, and I don’t think that’s the secretary’s intention,” Panetta said in a telephone interview.

Informed of Panetta’s remarks, another Interior official said Hodel still feels that the preliminary agreement “is the best thing going at this time.”

Major Changes Not Ruled Out

However, David Prosperi, head of Hodel’s public information office, declined to rule out major changes in designating the 150 tracts.

“I don’t believe any conditions were made as to what would happen,” he said. “It’s just too early to speculate.”

Prosperi said Hodel will meet later in Washington with the entire California congressional delegation to compare notes.

Meanwhile, Bill Grant, manager of the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service in Los Angeles, said there are potentially better oil-producing tracts off the coast of Orange County than the six tracts proposed for leasing under Hodel’s tentative plan.

He said the better tracts off the Orange County coast are comparable to the best tracts found along the coast of California. Charter said the greatest industry interest is in tracts adjacent to the three-mile boundary of state waters off Laguna Beach, none of which are included in the tentative agreement.

An oil industry spokesman said Wednesday that leasing of better oil-producing tracts would increase the chances of drilling. The oil and gas industry never has felt that the 150 tracts proposed for leasing under Hodel’s compromise are good prospects for oil exploration, said Bob Getts, spokesman for the Western Oil and Gas Assn. in Los Angeles.

Industry Viewpoint

“What the industry has been trying to say is that those (150 tracts) do not contain very much promise,” he said.

“If you offer development on tracts with very little likelihood of discovery, obviously” there’s less chance of drilling, Getts said. He said oil companies may not even bid on some of the nine-square-mile tracts currently proposed for leasing.

“It’s been our desire all along for (Hodel) to realize that he’s selected some very poor tracts,” Getts said.

But Charter suggested that oil industry representatives may now be poor-mouthing an agreement after giving extensive input to Hodel during negotiations. “The negotiating process began on about June 4 and lasted until July 16 . . . and stories about it were on Page 1 of all major trade publications,” he said.

“They were not conducted in any darkened cave or smoke-filled room. Interior consulted directly with industry and was coming in regularly with new (industry) positions,” Charter said.

Industry in Opposition

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 said officials of environmental groups who attended earlier sessions in the San Francisco Bay Area on 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.

“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.”

Claims Qualified Support

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

An aide to California Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) said Hodel’s remarks “vindicate both sides of the argument” against opening up the tracts off Orange County shores.

William Schreiber, Badham’s district field representative, said the key issue is whether oil companies have alternate tracts in mind off Orange County and how close those are to beaches and boating areas.

“Quite frankly, we have tried unsuccessfully in the past to obtain that information, but so far we don’t have the answer. We’re still trying,” Schreiber said.

Coalition members plan to present extensive testimony against opening Orange County’s coast to Hodel at a similar hearing at 9 a.m. Aug. 31 at Newport Beach City Hall. Other meetings are scheduled Aug. 30 in Long Beach and Aug. 31 in Oceanside, where residents also have mounted opposition to five tracts proposed off their shores.

Times staff writers Jeffrey Perlman, Kris Lindgren and Mark Landsbaum contributed to this article.