Hodel Draws New List of Offshore Oil Tracts : Areas Said to Have More Potential for Meeting Nation’s Needs Than Original Compromise Sites

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.

Mostly Northern California

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News that Hodel was considering opening 136 new tracts to oil and gas exploration raised both hope and fear among members of an anti-drilling coalition of Orange County cities, some of whom were in Washington on a special lobbying mission to block the earlier plan to open 54 square miles off Newport Beach and Laguna Beach.

“If more desirable tracts for the oil industry is what Hodel is looking for, I don’t think he is going to find them in Orange County,” Newport Beach Councilwoman Evelyn Hart said Monday. Hart noted that four of six previously proposed tracts had been leased by oil companies then abandoned in the late 1970s when no oil was found.

However, because oil industry officials have expressed great interest in prior lease bids in tracts just outside the three-mile limit of state waters stretching down to Laguna Beach, coalition members said they remain worried.

“Obviously, without knowing which tracts they are, I’m concerned because Mr. Hodel has consistently talked in terms of responding to the oil industry’s needs,” said Laguna Beach Councilman Robert Gentry.

“If there are over 100 new tracts in the compromise, they must be in response to pressure from the oil industry. So I am worried,” Gentry said. “We are still committed to the position that the original compromise is good, but that we need to preserve Orange County’s coastline by eliminating tracts off our shores.”

Laguna Beach Mayor Bobbie Minkin accused Hodel of “doing a divide-and-conquer routine, pitting the environmentalists types in Congress against some others.”

“It strikes me as very bad politics,” Minkin said in Washington Monday. “We have been playing fair and square all the way and Hodel has not. If this moratorium goes down, it is directly the responsibility of Interior Secretary Hodel, because we’ve been trying to keep it together.”

The original agreement between Hodel and congressional leaders, 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.

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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.

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 reestablish his own credibility.”

Pressure Tactics Feared

Panetta said Hodel is using prior lack of information about the viability of the tracts as an excuse for crumbling under pressure from the oil industry.

“We’re not dealing with a babe in the woods,” Panetta said. “He was the secretary of energy and the deputy secretary of Interior” before taking over the top Interior post.

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.”