White House Bows to Pleas; EPA to Be Put on Offshore Oil Panel

The White House, responding to pleas from environmentalists and dissent within the Administration, is planning to include the Environmental Protection Agency in a task force deliberating the future of offshore drilling, officials said Thursday.

The move will reverse an earlier decision to exclude the EPA from the panel, which is to be headed by Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. and will include top-level representatives from the National Academy of Sciences and the Department of Energy.

That exclusion had sparked an outcry from drilling opponents, who saw EPA as their ally in efforts to halt drilling for environmental reasons, and from agency officials anxious to regain a central role in environmental policy.

No formal decision to invite EPA to join the task force has yet been taken, a senior Administration official said Thursday night. But he said that Bush aides now have “no objections” to including its representatives on the drilling task force.

An Interior Department source, meanwhile, said that he already had been informed that the EPA would be invited to play a key role in the task force’s discussions.

Officials described the turnabout as a victory for new EPA Administrator William K. Reilly, whose assertive style is making aides to Interior Secretary Lujan increasingly edgy.

Already senior advisers to Lujan have met to discuss the prospect that the EPA chief, though not a member of Bush’s Cabinet, might become the dominant force within the Administration on environmental and conservation issues.

The special drilling task force was formed last week by President Bush, who called for delays in plans for drilling off the Southern and Northern California coasts until the panel made decisions based on an attempt to balance environmental and energy needs. The task force faces a deadline of Jan. 1, 1990.

Among the most vocal critics of EPA’s exclusion from the group was Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), who on Wednesday sent Bush a letter urging that the panel be broadened to include the agency.