Key Committee Extends Ban on New Oil Drilling

WASHINGTON — A key congressional committee Monday approved another one-year extension of the ban on new offshore oil drilling in federal waters off the California coast.

Despite concerns about domestic oil production prompted by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the vote “shows that we can still use this moratorium process to protect the coast of California,” said Robert H. Sulnick, executive director of the Santa Monica-based American Oceans Campaign.

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) also applauded the decision, but said Congress is unlikely to enact a long-term drilling ban in the immediate future because of concerns over the national economy and the crisis in the Middle East.

The ban, which Congress has enacted each year since 1981, was approved by the House Appropriations Committee. It must still be acted on by the full House and Senate.

The committee turned back attempts to eliminate or reduce the scope of a similar ban on new oil drilling off Florida’s Panhandle and west coast, but opened federal waters off Virginia to new drilling.

In June, President Bush ordered the Interior Department to delay for at least 10 years new oil and gas leasing off most of California, all of Oregon, Washington and southwest Florida, and New England north of Rhode Island. He postponed for at least six years new lease sales in a small number of tracts in California’s Santa Barbara Channel and Santa Maria Basin, where rigs are pumping already.

The measure approved Monday bans new drilling in those areas for a year, and includes a large section of the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida Panhandle and sections of the Atlantic between Maryland and New Jersey.