Offshore Oil Lease Program to Start : But Interior Secretary Hodel Foresees No Sales Until 1988

Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel said Thursday that his agency, now free of a four-year congressional ban on California offshore oil development, will begin the time-consuming process of preparing to sell exploration leases off the state’s coastline.

In the meantime, Hodel is scheduled to resume negotiations next week with an 18-member delegation of legislators from California and other coastal states aimed at resolving the thorny question of how to limit offshore drilling.

Speaking to reporters, Hodel contended that commencing the lease process will expedite tract sales if he and the lawmakers reach a drilling accord. “I’ve got to make it graphically clear to the delegation that this process is going on and that it will not affect the shape of the negotiations, although the negotiations may alter the final shape of the sale,” Hodel said.

But California Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), one of the congressional bargainers and a strong opponent of offshore development, said Hodel’s move was designed deliberately to sour the negotiations and to pave the way for wide-open coastline drilling.

“The Reagan Administration and the major oil companies want very much to clear the way for lease sales to take place during the Reagan years, because it’s clear that no other Administration, Republican or Democrat, could be as pliable for the oil interests,” Levine charged. “They want the oil companies to get a foot in the door during this Administration.”

Earlier Moratorium

Past Reagan Administration efforts to allow coastal oil exploration were thwarted by a moratorium on new lease sales approved by Congress at the behest of both of the state’s senators and a majority of its congressmen. However, congressional drilling opponents opted not to press for a renewal of the ban after they reached a tentative agreement with Hodel last summer that would have limited petroleum exploration to only 150 of the 6,000 potential tracts along the state’s coastline.

Hodel later reneged on the deal, but Congress refused to restore the moratorium, although it did agree to order Hodel back to the bargaining table.

Despite his decision to move ahead with the leasing process, Hodel predicted that laborious federal and local red tape as well as technological considerations will prevent any tract sales before 1988 and keep oil from flowing from offshore wells before the end of the century.

Hodel said he hopes to complete negotiations with the congressional delegation by early June and insisted that any agreement could be plugged into the ongoing leasing process. The department will make no attempt to lease tracts near eight environmentally sensitive areas, including the Big Sur region, the Santa Barbara ecological preserve and the Channel Islands marine preserve, Hodel promised.

He said the announcement next month will only outline general geographic areas in which the agency is considering development.