Hodel Draws New List of Offshore Oil Tracts : Areas Said to Have More Potential for Meeting U.S. Needs; Status of S.D. County Sites Unknown

Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel, preparing for a key meeting with California congressmen today, has drawn up a new list of 150 potential offshore drilling sites that contains only 14 of the tracts included in his original compromise with Congress, department officials said Monday.

The new tracts were tentatively selected for discussion, the officials said, because they would best meet the nation’s energy needs without intruding into environmentally sensitive areas or coastline used by the military.

Hodel’s aides refused to specify the location of the tracts on the new list, saying nothing yet is final. Officials noted, however, that they believe that there is good energy potential off the shore of Santa Cruz, Point Arena and Bodega Bay, areas not proposed for leasing under the original compromise.

It was unclear Monday whether Hodel had added any more sites in northern San Diego County to the five that had been proposed near Oceanside. However, Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) said after meeting with other California congressmen late Monday he expected more North County tracts to appear on the new list.

“The general consensus is it will certainly not be any better than what we worked out, and it could be worse,” Packard said. More sites, closer to shore and closer to populated areas, could be included, he said.

“It will probably be worse for most areas, not just San Diego County,” Packard said.

Mostly Northern California

The original agreement, announced July 16 after weeks of negotiation, would have opened 150 nine-square-mile tracts of ocean floor for oil exploration, mostly off Northern California, and would have protected 6,310 tracts from drilling for 15 years. The oil industry strongly objected to the proposal.

David Prosperi, an Interior Department spokesman, said Hodel did not have an economic and geological analysis of the tracts when he reached the preliminary agreement with legislators. Since then, Prosperi said, Hodel has learned that the agreement is “not in the national interest because of low resource potential.”

He added, “The potential for those tracts under the preliminary agreement is only 5% to 10% of the total resource potential off the shore of California.”

Prosperi also noted that Hodel negotiated the preliminary agreement under a deadline, trying to forestall a congressional subcommittee vote on a proposed moratorium. At the time Hodel accepted the agreement, he said, the committee vote was a few days away and congressional negotiators had indicated that they would not move any further.

Packard and Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), both participants in the negotiations that produced the original list of 150 tracts, said they would press for a renewal of the moratorium on drilling off the California shore if Hodel backed away from the compromise.

“Anyone that attempts to change the agreement we negotiated earlier in the summer will do so at their peril,” Lowery said. “I think we’ve gone as far as we can go.”

Packard predicted Monday that the chances for a new moratorium passing Congress were improved.

“The general political feeling is if we lose the agreement, it will be because of the secretary backing away from it,” he said. “That may cause a little shift of attitude among my colleagues here.”

Hodel is scheduled to meet with California’s congressional delegation today to ask for continued negotiations. Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), who was instrumental in negotiating the preliminary agreement, said, however, that Hodel has lost his credibility with members by backing away from the July compromise.

“He’s going to have to establish some good faith to have any hope of negotiating,” Panetta said. “At this point, I don’t know what he could do to re-establish his own credibility.”

Meanwhile, supporters of the preliminary agreement may try to get it through Congress without Hodel’s backing or, as an alternative, may seek a moratorium on any leasing, Panetta said.

“The pros of moving the agreement (through Congress) is that Hodel negotiated it with the delegation,” Panetta said. “To simply move a moratorium, on the other hand, just gets us back to ground zero.”

Areas Near Islands

The eight environmentally sensitive areas excluded by Hodel from exploration are 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.

Hodel met with environmental leaders Monday to discuss his reactions to a series of public meetings held in California last month to solicit comment about the preliminary agreement.

“Essentially, what he told us was this is not an agreement any longer, that the wrong 150 tracts had been identified, that rather than this being the agreement, it was really one step in the process whereby a final agreement would be established with the right tracts and the right time frame,” said Karl Wendelowski, executive director of Friends of the Earth, who attended the meeting.

Phillip Clark, vice president of the National Ocean Industries Assn., said both Hodel and his staff indicated in recent meetings that the agreement would be negotiated further.

“There were some real mistakes made in the assessment process,” said Clark, whose group represents 450 companies involved in offshore development. “Hodel thought there was a good deal more oil and/or gas in those (original 150) tracts than subsequently turned out to be the case. We accept that on face value. It was an honest mistake.”