President OKs New Curbs on Offshore Drilling : Environment: Despite his reservations about pre-leasing restraints off California, Bush signs the $11.2-billion Interior appropriations bill.

President Bush on Monday signed into law tough restrictions on offshore oil drilling and pre-lease preparation activities, temporarily settling another struggle between drilling interests and lawmakers stirred by the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Terms of the far-reaching moratorium were worked out by House and Senate conferees last month as part of the $11.2-billion appropriations bill for the Department of the Interior. The President signed it in spite of reservations about pre-leasing restraints off the California coast.

“Notwithstanding these reservations, I have signed the bill because its benefits--particularly the treatment of many environmental, conservation and energy-related issues important to the nation--outweigh my reservations,” the President declared.

Earlier this year, Bush set aside aggressive drilling plans for the outer continental shelf until a task force he created could complete studies of the impact of drilling off the coasts of Southern and Northern California.

But the House went even further, extending the moratorium to the huge Lease Sale 119 off the central California coast. Language inserted into the bill also suspended pre-lease activity off the central coast.

In addition to the restraints on drilling and drilling preparation off California, the measure signed by Bush also temporarily prohibits drilling off the coast of Massachusetts, in an area of the outer shelf stretching along the Mid-Atlantic states, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Florida Keys.

The National Research Council is due to make a report to the President’s drilling task force next week, giving its assessment of the impact of offshore drilling. Task force recommendations are due to be on the President’s desk by Jan. 1.

Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr., the task force chairman, has indicated that the panel may decide to give the President an outline of options in offshore drilling policy rather than presenting formal recommendations.

When the Senate passed the Interior bill earlier this year, it placed no restraints upon pre-lease activities--steps that include studies and paper work. But when the measure went to conference to work out differences with the House version of the bill, California congressmen pressed for a ban on any pre-leasing activity, including the preparation of environmental impact statements.

A standoff threatened to send the offshore drilling provisions back to the floor of both houses unresolved. However, Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) struck a compromise banning pre-lease activity until five months after completion of the task force report to the President.

Lowery said the compromise will effectively prevent any pre-lease activity off the central coast for the rest of the current fiscal year. Pre-lease activities were nearing completion and the preparations were proceeding toward leases off the northern and southern coasts when Bush’s drilling moratorium was declared.

The measure signed Monday also included compromise language attempting to protect the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest, while at the same time saving the habitat of the endangered spotted owl.

Both the environmental questions and Congress’ addition of more than $952 million to the Administration’s Interior budget request were lost in an uproar over the bill’s funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) tried to attach an amendment blocking funding for “obscene or indecent” art, but lawmakers managed to somewhat defuse the furiously debated issue with a compromise blocking federal funding of such material if it is without serious “literary artistic, political, or scientific value.”