REDONDO BEACH

Saying it is time to “restore the friendliness with our neighboring cities,” Councilwoman Kay Horrell this week won City Council approval for a motion that revises the city’s position on an offshore oil drilling compromise that would open tracts off the Palos Verdes Peninsula to oil exploration.

The council reiterated its earlier decision to support the compromise in general but voted 4 to 0, with Archie Snow absent, to oppose provisions in the controversial compromise that relate to 5 1/2 Peninsula tracts.

Horrell said the City Council’s earlier position on the compromise, which did not mention the Palos Verdes tracts, had alienated some neighboring cities, particularly those on the Peninsula. She said the new position is modeled after a resolution approved last week by the Torrance City Council, which supported the compromise but opposed conventional offshore oil and gas drilling in the Santa Monica Bay and requested that the tracts off the Peninsula be spared.

Councilman Ronald Cawdrey joined in voting for Horrell’s motion, but said the council was opening the door to complaints from other California cities that would also like areas off their shores deleted from the compromise.

“Why are we selecting these 5 1/2 tracts?” Cawdrey asked. “Where do our neighbors end?”

The council instructed Mayor Barbara Doerr to relay the council’s new stance to Secretary of the Interior Donald P. Hodel when she testifies Friday at a public hearing on the compromise in downtown Los Angeles.