Foes Vow to Seek Offshore Oil Ban if Hodel Alters Plan

Four national environmental lobbies warned Monday that they will seek a new congressional ban on oil exploration off California if Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel tries to “significantly alter” a pact with congressional leaders limiting offshore oil drilling until the year 2000.

The warning, contained in a letter sent to Hodel as he camped in Yosemite National Park last weekend, was released amid reports that Hodel’s aides are compiling a list of 150 undersea tracts believed by industry to hold the greatest potential for oil.

Hodel tentatively agreed with California congressional leaders last month to limit future offshore leasing to 150 nine-by-nine-mile tracts, including several off Los Angeles and Orange counties. The agreement appeared to end a bitter political fight over the renewal of a four-year congressional moratorium on oil exploration on 57,000 square miles of California ocean bottom.

However, after being blistered by the oil industry and others who called the agreed-on tracts worthless, Hodel hinted during a recent California swing that he may seek major changes in the pact.

In their letter, leaders of the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Friends of the Earth pledged to use the courts and Congress to block major changes in the plan.

“If you abandon or significantly alter this agreement, which according to the congressional delegation provides the best long-term protection politically achievable, we will be forced to vigorously pursue a congressionally imposed moratorium on (offshore) leasing . . . similar to the moratorium that has been in place in the last four years,” the letter says.

“We also stand ready to litigate if sensitive areas protected under the preliminary agreement are opened to leasing,” it adds.

New List

Hodel, who is currently in Hawaii as part of a monthlong Western tour, could not be reached for comment. An industry expert, Hank Wright of the Los Angeles-based Western Oil and Gas Assn., said he is unaware of any Interior Department effort to compile a new list of offshore tracts.

“But I think if we heard he had, we’d say, ‘What next?’ ” Wright said. “He (Hodel) has lost a lot of believability out here. Depending on who he’s talking to out in California, he tells them what they want to hear.”

Wright, who said there is “more oil in your local supermarket” than in the Southern California tracts included in the compromise drilling agreement, said the oil industry prefers to extend the current ban on oil exploration and negotiate a new deal, rather than accept the tentative agreement between Hodel and congressional leaders.