McCarthy, Wilson Take Credit for Delay on Oil Leases

A joint congressional committee, resolving differences between the Senate and House over proposed offshore oil drilling in the West, decided Tuesday not to allow the sale of any leases in the next year for two large areas of the California coast and another area on the Alaska coast.

Both candidates in the California Senate race immediately took credit for prompting the action, which environmentalists hailed as a major victory in the struggle to protect the California coast from drilling.

Oil leasing became a hotly disputed issue in the Senate race last month when Democratic Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy flew to Washington and was credited with persuading the leading proponent of accelerated oil leasing in Southern California, Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), to reverse his position and support a moratorium.

However, Johnston, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, also added a provision that stepped up leasing in an equally sensitive area in Alaska’s Bristol Bay in order to make up for revenues that would be lost to the California moratorium. This prompted environmentalists and McCarthy’s GOP rival, incumbent Sen. Pete Wilson, to sharply criticize McCarthy’s role in the matter.

Each candidate Tuesday contended that he was the one who persuaded key members of the conference committee to drop the plan for accelerating the Alaska leasing.

“I think I was very persuasive in getting him (Johnston) to change his mind on (the lease sale in Southern California) and on the Bristol Bay language,” McCarthy said Tuesday. “We hung in there until we got the solution that we wanted.”

Wilson’s office released a statement saying that the conferees agreed with Wilson to strike the Bristol Bay plan after he spoke to the committee during its all-day meeting.

The committee also decided Tuesday to place moratoriums on two proposed lease sales on the Florida and New England coasts.

Interior Department Secretary Donald Hodel has said that he might recommend that President Reagan veto the Interior appropriations bill if it contains an oil-leasing moratorium for the Florida area. However, congressional aides speculated that Reagan would allow the bill to become law in order to assist the campaign of Vice President George Bush. Interior Department officials were unavailable for comment.

Lisa Speer, senior staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental group that had taken the Interior Department to court over its plan to develop Bristol Bay, said the decision represented a major victory because the Reagan Administration will have no more chances to open the nation’s coastlines to oil drilling.

“California came out of this very well,” she said. “We have been fighting leasing since the beginning of the Reagan Administration. To hold onto these areas of California is a real victory.”

She said a number of lawmakers and environmentalists deserved credit for persuading the conference committee to back off the Bristol Bay proposal. She said, however, that Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper, along with members of that state’s congressional delegation, deserved the lion’s share of credit.

“I wouldn’t put anyone above the people from Alaska,” she said.

Asked about McCarthy and Wilson, Speer said, “I think they both worked to try to see that it was resolved, and we appreciate that effort.”

Frank Clifford reported from Los Angeles.