Report Is Blow to Oil Leases Off Calif. Coast

A National Academy of Sciences panel has concluded that the Interior Department lacks sufficient information to proceed with projected oil drilling leases in two sites off the California coast, according to a report to be made public today.

Its finding that knowledge about the consequences of oil exploration there is “inadequate and unreliable” marks a major blow to Administration hopes to set policy for the controversial sites by the end of the year.

The report by the prestigious National Research Council could result in further postponements of leasing steps already delayed by a recent congressional moratorium barring lease sales until next Oct. 1.

The report, commissioned by the White House, found that the government had not gathered enough information about either Southern California oceanography or the effects of drilling on the region’s social and economic life to go forward with a leasing decision.

It similarly faulted the Interior Department for failing to take into account the socioeconomic consequences of an oil lease off Northern California.

The finding comes just two months before a Cabinet-level task force is due to recommend to President Bush whether drilling in the two California sites and in a separate Florida tract should proceed.

The report, made available by an Administration source, is to be presented to the panel at a public meeting today. Interior Department officials expressed disappointment with its findings. They acknowledged that it could weaken the impact of the task force report severely. The report had been expected to recommend drilling in at least some sites.

In the aftermath of the research council criticisms, the scheduled Administration policy recommendation almost certainly will have to be accompanied by the caveat that more research is needed, representatives from both sides of the issue agreed.

The need for further study could delay leasing steps beyond the dates set by the moratorium, which prohibits even prelease activity in Southern California’s Lease Sale 95 until June 1. No actual lease sale in that tract or Northern California’s Lease Sale 91 tract could take place until at least next Oct. 1 under the congressionally imposed restriction.

Robert Kallman, executive director of the task force, said through a spokesman that the findings of the research council will be “incorporated in our final report to the President.” He did not elaborate.

Opponents of offshore drilling hailed the report as a bold action that raises questions not only about the three lease sales in question, but about the entire process that sets aside parts of the nation’s outer continental shelf for oil exploration.

“It’s a very damning report,” said Andy Palmer, a spokesman for the American Oceans Campaign. “I think it calls into question the whole viability of the offshore leasing program.”

“It basically confirms what environmentalists have been saying for years,” said Ann Nothoff, a senior project planner for the Natural Resoures Defense Council. “We’ve gone ahead making these decisions (about offshore drilling) without having adequate information.”

The NAS Research Council concluded that, for all lease sale areas, the available scientific information about potential environmental impacts does not provide a sufficient basis for the government to decide whether to proceed with oil drilling.

In addition, it found some of the available information so flawed as to provide inadequate grounding even for a decision to proceed with leasing, an earlier and less drastic step in the oil exploration process.

The council raised the most questions about the adequacy of data available for the proposed Lease Sale 116 off the Gulf Coast of Florida, where it said the Interior Department had inadequate information about ecological and social consequences of drilling and only marginal data about oceanographic characteristics.

“Physical oceanographic information is sufficient to predict that any oil spill in the sale area would probably soon hit the coast,” the report said.

For Southern California, the council found information about the ecological consequences of drilling to be adequate for an informed decision on leasing.

But it strongly criticized as inadequate and unreliable the available data about the physical oceanography of the lease sale area, where it said the flows of currents that could bring spilled oil ashore are not sufficiently understood. And it said that it is doubtful whether the Interior Department has adequately considered information about the socioeconomic consequences of drilling.

The proposed Lease Sale 91 off Northern California received less criticism from the council, which decided that both ecological and oceanographic data for the region provide adequate grounds for a leasing decision.

But the council said that socioeconomic matters--such as estimates of beach attendance and the degree to which it would be influenced by the presence of oil derricks--were treated “more generally, abstractly and incompletely” than other factors.

On another score, however, the research council offered a stamp of approval to the leasing process. It concluded that the government has available adequate data to estimate the amount of hydrocarbon reserves likely to lie beneath the ocean floor in the proposed lease areas.

Staff writer Larry Stammer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.