Try the Truth, Mr. Hodel

Shortly before resuming negotiations with California members of Congress over oil exploration and drilling off the California coast, Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel delivered a speech in Denver in which he said, in effect, that Californians don’t really care much whether the rest of the nation has enough energy or not. “A group of people there basically want to blindfold the American people to whatever resources there are,” Hodel was quoted as saying. Wealthy coastal Californians want to preserve their scenic vistas “whatever the cost to the United States,” he said.

Understandably, the California lawmakers did not consider such comments conducive to fruitful negotiation. So they have resumed efforts to reimpose a moratorium on the leasing of environmentally sensitive portions of the outer continental shelf as a fallback position in case the talks with Hodel fail. The California team deserves all the backing that it can get for that position. The key may be support from Gov. George Deukmejian, who was instrumental in getting the four-year-old moratorium lifted last year, but who has quarreled with Hodel over his latest leasing plans.

Hodel’s Denver comments clearly are designed to cultivate the perception promoted by people from places like Texas and Louisiana that Californians are selfish Chardonnay-and-cheese fanciers who are interested only in protecting the pristine vistas from their million-dollar coastal chalets while they run around at will in their BMWs and Mercedeses. This perception clearly began to catch hold in the last session of Congress, and needs to be countered.

Those who are in sympathy with that argument should be told that California is the nation’s fourth-ranking producer of crude oil, that 17% of the oil consumed in the state comes from off shore, that the state produces 13% of the nation’s oil, that more than 700,000 acres of the California outer continental shelf now are under lease to oil companies, and that California has more than 51,000 producing wells.

They should be told also that while California accounts for about 11% of the nation’s population, according to the California Almanac, the state uses only about 8.3% of the energy consumed in the nation and 7.7% of the electricity. While Hodel talks of California stubbornly denying needy people oil-industry jobs, Californians should talk about the tourist, fishery and shipping industries founded on the coastal environment; the millions who use California beaches, and California’s pioneering of energy conservation and alternative energy sources.

Texans and Louisianians may boast of the oil rigs in their Gulf waters, but ask a New Yorker how he would like to have a derrick placed alongside the Statue of Liberty, or a Cape Codder a drill rig between Woods Hole and Martha’s Vineyard, or a North Carolinian one off Cape Hatteras.

The Interior Department faces cancellation of proposed oil-lease sales off Alaska and the East Coast because of lack of oil-industry interest in the midst of a world oil glut, but is intent on boring ahead off California, feeding on the faulty perception of greedy, wealthy Californians. Fifty-one thousand oil wells testify that California always has been willing to pump its share of energy. It still is, if the federal Administration will negotiate in good faith and back up its rhetoric about protecting the environment.