Bush Likely to Allow Drilling Off California : Environment: But it probably will be banned off Florida. The President’s decision is expected next month.

President Bush is likely to allow new oil drilling in some areas off the California coast, White House officials said Sunday.

As the President, at an Earth Day ceremony, dropped his strongest hint yet that he would prohibit drilling off the Florida coast, senior aides, in the words of one, said his decision on California drilling would be “more mixed.”

The decision has been one of the most sensitive Bush has faced regarding the environment, and it has brought enormous pressure on the White House.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater has said a decision was being delayed pending additional research. However, other White House officials said Bush was likely to announce his decisions affecting both Florida and California sometime next month.

Word that the President would likely permit some oil drilling off the California coast while banning it off Florida drew rebukes from California officials and environmentalists.

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), who has fought offshore oil drilling, assailed the report during an Earth Day appearance at Los Angeles’ Exposition Park. “It looks like the environmental President has become the Exxon President,” Cranston said. “We look at the coast in California and see beauty. He sees dollar signs.”

Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), another leading congressional opponent of offshore drilling, asked: “After (oil spills in) Valdez, after Huntington Beach, what more does he (Bush) need?”

Southern California regional Sierra Club Director Bob Hattoy vowed: “We are not going to let him drill California’s coastline. . . . Before the President can get to the California coast he has to get through us.”

Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) took to the stage at a major Earth Day celebration in Santa Monica after learning of Bush’s possible decision and exhorted the crowd to “Stand up and say, ‘No drilling! No drilling!’ ” Later, Hayden said: “This is bound to create a thunderstorm of resistance in California from Democrats and Republicans alike.”

In February, 1989, Bush had suspended preparations for leasing three huge areas of the Outer Continental Shelf for oil drilling. In addition to the lease sale area southwest of the Everglades, the suspension covered two areas of the Outer Continental Shelf along two-thirds of the California coastline.

Bush was given a 200-page secret report in January by an intergovernmental task force presenting the environmental and economic impacts of drilling in the three areas, and his options for offshore exploration for oil and actual drilling.

The report is understood to offer choices ranging from leasing one of the three areas within a year to delays of as much as 10 years.

The halt in the lease preparations stemmed from Bush’s promise during the 1988 presidential campaign that he would not allow drilling in “environmentally sensitive” areas.

However, Bush has never signaled that he would halt all drilling, and his aides have stressed the importance of continuing exploration and drilling operations to minimize the United States’ dependence on foreign oil brought to this country by tankers.

Bush spoke briefly about offshore drilling during an early morning ceremony at which he awarded a “Point of Light” commendation to a Key West, Fla., volunteer organization, Reef Relief. The group installs buoys to which boats can tie up off the keys, to avoid dropping anchors that can damage the only living coral reefs in the continental United States.

In a broad hint that he would close the Florida areas to drilling, Bush talked of his meeting with the founder of Reef Relief. “I told him there would be an answer very, very soon. And I didn’t think he’d be too disappointed,” Bush said.

Bush also said he would ask the International Maritime Commission to create what is known as an “area to be avoided.” He said this would close the seas over the reefs to vessels carrying oil or hazardous material and to all other ships greater than 50 meters in length.

“The Exxon Valdez disaster has made us all painfully aware of the ecological devastation which can result from a major oil spill,” Bush said, referring to the March, 1989, spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

“The Florida coral reefs are one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world and a unique national treasure,” Bush said. “Protecting the reefs from damage both from vessel groundings and pollution is imperative.”

On April 6, Bush told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that he knows the Everglades present an “ecological balance (that) is highly sensitive,” and that he would announce a policy that “prohibits drilling in certain highly sensitive areas.”

Bush has offered no such indications about his California decision.

But one senior White House official said the presidential decision on the California sites would most likely allow drilling in some areas, but not all.

“That’s how I read it,” said another senior White House official, adding that Bush was “edging toward something along those lines. That’s the way it’s trending right now.”

However, he cautioned that no decision had been made, and that while May was the likely time when it would be made and announced, even that was not certain.

For some time, there has been speculation outside the White House that Bush would allow new drilling off Southern California, where drilling operations already exist, but would ban it off the Northern California coast.

The southern area, Lease Sale 95, reaches from the Mexican border north to Monterey County. Lease Sale 91 extends from Sonoma County to the Oregon border.

But the senior official, suggesting the complexity of the issue, commented: “You can’t say the entire northern coast is sensitive and the southern coast is not.”

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, pointed out that the campaign pledge made by Bush, who was involved in the offshore oil drilling business as a young entrepreneur in Texas in the 1950s, only concerned blocking drilling in “truly environmentally sensitive areas.”

“Most of our people feel the tract in Florida is pretty darn close to the environmentally sensitive standard. The ones off California--it’s a lot harder to argue that. It’s going to be a little more mixed.”

Pointing out that oil has been drilled for years off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, the official said: “It’s important that every part of the country bear some of the burden, unless there is true environmental sensitivity.”

Among the factors playing into Bush’s decision, he said, was the concern that the more offshore drilling is limited, the more the United States would be forced to use imported oil. This, in turn, would increase U.S. reliance on tankers, which are themselves vulnerable and have been responsible for spills.

Times staff writers Larry B. Stammer, Louis Sahagun and Bettina Boxall in Los Angeles contributed to this story.