In Bold Step, Gore to Call for East-West Drilling Ban

Vice President Al Gore, promising he would have “no higher priority” as president than protection of the environment, will announce today that he will ban any new offshore drilling for oil and gas along the California and Florida coasts if he is elected.

Gore’s plan places him in the thick of a roiling dispute in California, where oil companies have already paid more than $1.2 billion for drilling rights that would be blocked.

The boldest policy announcement of his presidential campaign also turns attention to a divisive, signature issue in his political life--the protection of the environment. Recently, Gore has been stung by activists who complain his performance in the White House is a sharp disappointment for a lawmaker who once championed the environment in a heartfelt book titled “Earth in the Balance.”

Gore planned to delve into that debate today in a speech to a citizen group in Rye, N.H., outlining both specific steps he would take as president--beginning with the ban on oil and gas drilling--as well as the philosophical roots of his environmental policy.

“I will take the most sweeping steps in our history to protect our oceans and coastal waters from offshore oil drilling,” he was expected to say. “I will make sure that there is no new oil leasing off the coast of California and Florida.

“And then I will go much further: I will do everything in my power to make sure that there is no new drilling off these sensitive coasts--even in areas already leased for drilling by previous administrations.”

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a president could impose a drilling ban without congressional approval. But he predicted such action would trigger a lengthy and expensive legal battle with oil companies. At stake is an estimated 1 billion barrels of oil buried off California’s Central Coast, more than has been taken from federal waters in this century.

Industry Says Risk of Spills Is Reduced

Industry officials say new technology has reduced the risk of oil spills and made drilling operations much more efficient, requiring fewer rigs than existing operations.

Frank Holmes, the coastal coordinator for the Western States Petroleum Assn., also argued that the offshore oil “belongs to the citizens of the United States. It’s a resource that should be developed for the benefit of all citizens.”

He added that the leases are “valid contracts between the federal government” and the lease owners and “to deny the rights granted under these contracts would be very difficult to justify.”

For at least three decades, the unresolved dispute over drilling for oil off the California coast has been a centerpiece of the nation’s environmental debate, raising concerns about oil spills that threaten birds and sea life, and air pollution from the uncontrolled flaring of gas.

Federal authorities were expected in June to give oil companies permission to proceed with development of 40 sea-bottom leases there, most of them in untapped waters off southern San Luis Obispo County.

But Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in August canceled four of the leases and imposed new obstacles to further drilling, giving oil companies 90 days to address any effects their operations would have on the endangered California sea otter, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and other environmental concerns.

Like California, Florida is also in a dispute pitting the state against a major oil company eyeing offshore drilling operations.

In addition to pledging a halt to such operations, Gore is saying that he would try to prevent oil drilling in federal waters off all states where the public clearly opposes such operations, even if leases have already been granted to oil companies.

Gore to Address Activists’ Concerns

At its heart, the complaint from environmental activists is that during nearly seven years as vice president, Gore has failed to take advantage of his position as their most powerful advocate.

In a text of the speech Gore is scheduled to deliver today, he addresses that concern.

“The environment is much more than a policy position to me; it is a profoundly moral obligation,” he says. “We only have one Earth. And if we do not keep it healthy and safe, every other gift we leave our children will be meaningless. . . . I will have no higher priority as president.”

In his book seven years ago, Gore advocated the end of the internal combustion engine within 25 years. He carried to his desk around the corner from the Oval Office the excited expectations of the environmental movement and the deep-seated fears of the business community.

But today, many in the business world look ahead to the prospects of a Gore administration with trepidation. And environmentalists are disappointed with the Clinton administration.

Gore’s campaign was shaken last month when Friends of the Earth, one of the smaller national environmental groups, endorsed former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore’s sole opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“There was a great expectation he’d do something other politicians couldn’t do,” Brent Blackwelder, who heads the group’s Washington office and its political operation, said of Gore. “But if you ask what has happened in seven years, you find a very disappointing, disenchanting record of promises that have been broken.”

Consider, for example, this complaint from Dan Becker, the Sierra Club’s chief worrier about air pollution and global warming:

“If in 1993, at the beginning of the Clinton-Gore administration, with the nation’s leading environmentalist as vice president, you had told me that 6 1/2 years later global warming emissions would still be rising and were 12% above where they were when the decade began; that we’d failed to tackle global warming emissions from cars and trucks; failed to tackle global warming emissions from power plants and every other significant source, I’d have said you’re crazy. There’s no way that can happen.”

But, indeed, he says, that is the case: The carbon-based pollution that many scientists agree lies at the heart of global warming continues to rise from engines powering cars and trucks across the country. And, most recently, President Clinton sided against environmentalists who wanted the federal government to consider tougher fuel efficiency standards for the auto industry.

Businesses’ assessment of Gore’s actions in the last seven years is also negative.

“He hasn’t done anything that has been in moderation. He doesn’t sit down to figure out what is the problem and how do we address it in a practical way,” says Bill Kovacs, vice president for environment and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “We don’t see him as being somebody we would be able to deal with on the environment on a rational basis.”

Kathleen McGinty, who served as head of the Council on Environmental Quality until a year ago, said the complaints are to be expected. “The environmental groups are quite professional,” she said. “Their job is to continuously raise the bar. They pocket the accomplishments we make and point to all the work yet to be done.”

Against that backdrop, Gore plans to reintroduce himself to the nation, and, specifically, to New Hampshire voters, as a presidential candidate prepared to respect both the environment and the economy, two issues he argues are not mutually exclusive.

“I am placing environmental protection at the very heart of my campaign for the presidency,” he was prepared to say today.

Gore’s supporters point to--and his critics among the environmentalists acknowledge--a number of major steps the administration has taken, with Clinton acting under the vice president’s tutoring:

Against a barrage from a variety of advocates representing every industry from power companies to backyard barbecuers, the administration toughened national standards restricting smog and soot in the air. The president declared vast reaches of southern Utah to be protected wilderness, a step so unpopular with ranchers there that he announced it in Arizona.

Just last week, Clinton bypassed Congress and initiated steps to ban road-building in more than 40 million acres of the national forests, a course widely equated in significance with any taken by Theodore Roosevelt, the leading figure in environmental politics.