Drilling Ban Extension Passes Committee : Environment: Orange County officials are pleased with the progress but say they won’t be satisfied until they win a long-term moratorium with the force of law.

Orange County officials who oppose offshore oil drilling claimed victory Monday when a key congressional committee approved another one-year extension of the ban on new drilling in federal waters off the California coast.

However, the officials said they still want Congress to enact a long-range drilling ban that would give the force of law to the offshore drilling moratorium for California and other states announced last June by President Bush.

“I think it’s terrific,” said Laguna Beach Mayor Lida Lenney, one of four Orange County officials who traveled to Washington last month to lobby for the extension. “It’s good news, but not good enough.”

In addition to a enacting a long-term drilling moratorium, Lenney said Congress should designate the area between Orange County and Catalina as a new national seashore to afford it added protection.

The drilling ban off California, which Congress has enacted each year since 1981, was included in Interior Department funding legislation approved by the House Appropriations Committee. The Interior Department handles the lease of ocean tracts for oil and gas exploration and development for the federal government.

None of the committee members directly challenged the California drilling ban. 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 of Virginia to new drilling. No immediate lease sales are planned in the area.

The one-year moratorium imposed by the Appropriations Committee, which must be approved by the full House and the Senate before it becomes law, also includes several areas that were left open to drilling by President Bush in June.

In a long-awaited decision, the President 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 by the Appropriations Committee bans drilling in those areas for a year and also includes a large section of the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida panhandle, Alaska’s Bristol Bay and sections of the Atlantic between Maryland and New Jersey.

“We want more than the President’s statement in June. An executive order would be helpful,” said Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), who has pushed for the annual drilling bans along with Rep. Leon Panetta (D-Monterey).

Despite concerns about domestic oil production prompted by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the House 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.

However, Sulnick said, “I think what we need on this is law. While we’re very happy that the President has a moratorium in place, we really need it to be codified” by the Congress.

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), who represents Orange County’s south coast, 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.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who, like Packard, is a strong opponent of drilling off Orange County, said he has not discounted the possibility of congressional action on a multi-year drilling ban this year, especially if Congress is called into a lame-duck session in November.

“The President won’t be around for 10 years,” Cox said. “While the political will exists (to enact a longer moratorium for California) we should pass such a provision. Strike while the iron is hot. I’m not so sure it might not happen this year.”

Lowery and Panetta had wanted to enact legislation giving the President’s promise the force of law. However, the congressmen in July lost a bid to formalize the multi-year ban before the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee. They had planned to bring up the matter with the full committee but were dissuaded by congressional reaction to events in the Middle East.

“In view of the changing world conditions . . . the timing was not appropriate to proceed,” said Lowery. “We will revisit that another time.”

Other Orange County officials who came to Washington to lobby committee members to keep the California drilling moratorium in place were John Sibley, chief deputy director of the Orange County Department of Environmental Management, Ruthelyn Plummer, a member of the Newport Beach City Council, and Pat McGuian, president of the Orange County League of Cities.