Exxon Must Restore Shores, Lujan Declares

Exxon Corp. must restore the soiled Alaska environment after it finishes cleaning up the nation’s worst oil spill, Secretary of Interior Manuel Lujan Jr. said Wednesday after he spent two days touring areas affected by the Exxon Valdez spill.

In addition to calling on Exxon to restore the grease-coated shores to pre-spill conditions, Lujan said the time has come to resume offshore drilling, which was suspended after the tanker struck a reef and lost 11 million gallons of oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989.

Lujan said that the freeze on drilling off California, Florida and Alaska should be ended. He also predicted approval of controversial drilling plans for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska and a federal auction of tracts there in 1993.

Lujan reiterated the need for further environmental efforts by Exxon, but his overall message was that the Bush Administration wanted to get back into the federal oil tract leasing business.

Federal offshore oil and gas leasing was put on hold in various places, and Congress even placed a moratorium on drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a rich fishing ground where leases had been sold before the Exxon Valdez spill.

“We’re looking for all kinds of ways to open it up,” Lujan said of the offshore areas picked for drilling. “We’re very dedicated to move ahead with it again in an environmentally sensitive manner.”

Money might turn the heads of drilling opponents in coastal states, Lujan said. “One of the things we’re looking at is to share oil revenues with the local communities, so the local community doesn’t just have the impact and no money to take care of it. So that might reduce some of the opposition.”

Lujan said he had neither the authority nor the desire to cancel the Bristol Bay lease sale--which three Alaska governors tried unsuccessfully to stop before the Exxon spill. He said: “If I do it for Alaska, then Florida will be asking us to do the same thing, and I’ll never be able to lease another inch of ground anywhere, because every state will come in and say, ‘Cancel that lease.’ ”