Legislators Issue Warning on Offshore Drilling

‘We are convinced that the preliminary agreement you reached with members of the California congressional delegation represents the most balanced approach to the development of California’s coastal resources. We intend to honor our commitment and expect you will do the same.’

--Wording in telegram from 27 California legislators

Twenty-seven California legislators, setting the stage for a meeting Tuesday with Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel over offshore oil leasing, have warned in a toughly worded telegram that they expect Hodel to honor a controversial agreement limiting oil exploration off the state’s coast until the year 2000.

The telegram came Friday after Hodel stated in a letter that he now suspects the tentative agreement will place “potentially vast energy resources . . . beyond the nation’s reach for too long a period of time.”

In reply, the legislators stated: “We are convinced that the preliminary agreement you reached with members of the California congressional delegation represents the most balanced approach to the development of California’s coastal resources.

“We intend to honor our commitment and expect you will do the same,” the telegram added. In addition to 25 members of the House of Representatives, the telegram was signed by Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston and Republican Sen. Pete Wilson.

Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), one of a team of legislators who negotiated the agreement, told Hodel in a letter that his intent to scrap the compromise is “disappointing at the very least.”

Hodel had bargained with the legislators last July to open 150, tracts of ocean floor, each nine square miles, for oil exploration, largely off Northern California, while protecting an additional 6,310 tracts from drilling for the next 15 years. The legislators agreed in turn to drop efforts to renew a four-year congressional ban on oil exploration covering the entire 6,460 tracts.

Six tracts covering 54 square miles off Newport Beach were included in that compromise between the legislators and Hodel. However, Orange County citizens, particularly in Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, have organized in opposition to the plans to open the area to oil exploration.

A group calling itself Save Our Shores was organized in Laguna Beach and has staged demonstrations and “educational rallies” during the past month to protest plans to open Orange County shores to oil exploration. The group also petitioned Hodel during a meeting in Newport Beach on Aug. 31 to delete the six Orange County tracts from the compromise he reached earlier with California legislators.

The telegram sent to Hodel on Friday was not signed by the county’s congressional delegation, except for Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), whose district includes a small portion of the county’s southern coastal area.

The compromise reached by the California legislators and Hodel was scheduled to be written into legislation pending before a House Appropriations subcommittee headed by Rep. Sidney R. Yates (D-Ill.). But the Interior secretary, under strong attack from the oil industry and some California Republicans, has hinted for almost a month that he would seek to renegotiate at least part of the agreement.

In a letter to Yates on Thursday, Hodel all but officially scrapped the compromise, saying that the 150 tracts opened for drilling contain “a mere 5% to 7%” of the total petroleum reserves in the 6,460 tracts currently excluded from drilling. Unless that oil and gas is concentrated in a few tracts, he said, it will not be practical for oil companies to extract it.

Hodel also told Yates that recent threats of lawsuits from some cities near the 150 compromise tracts had eliminated the “certainty of some development” of offshore reserves, which, the secretary said, was the sole reason he struck the drilling agreement.

Hodel has since asked aides to select 150 tracts that offer the greatest oil potential outside of eight areas that Hodel has excluded from exploration. Those areas are the Santa Barbara Ecological Preserve, the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, the Cordell Bank and areas off Big Sur, the Farallon Islands, Point Reyes and San Francisco and Monterey bays.

The telegram from California lawmakers contained no hint of retaliation if Hodel does not stand by the compromise, but legislators previously have said that they might seek a fifth yearlong ban on California oil exploration if the agreement is abandoned. Hodel and the state delegation will meet Tuesday to discuss the status of the agreement.