Bush Faces Tough Call on Offshore Drilling Survey

President Bush has been pushing for Congress to send him an energy bill virtually from the day he took office in 2001, but the measure he receives may present him with a difficult personal and political choice.

His dilemma involves the issue of what to do about the nation’s offshore deposits of oil and natural gas.

On one side, Bush’s longtime supporters in the energy industry, along with the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate energy committees, have pushed to include in the legislation language authorizing an inventory of the country’s offshore oil and gas resources.

On the other, a number of Bush’s GOP allies in Congress oppose the measure. So does the president’s brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, a state expected to be a battleground in the 2004 presidential election.

The survey is one of the contentious issues facing House and Senate negotiators as they work to complete the first overhaul of national energy policy in more than a decade. Although the conferees hoped to complete their work by the end of this week, it now appears they may not have a bill to send to the White House until later this year.

Opponents say the provision could threaten a long-standing moratorium on new drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, except for large parts of the Gulf of Mexico and areas off Alaska.

But Ken Johnson, a spokesman for Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the survey was critical to national security.

“What’s the harm in knowing what America has in reserve, in the event of a catastrophic supply disruption?” he asked. “No one is suggesting that we go into these areas and drill right now. But given our vulnerability [to foreign sources], we shouldn’t have our heads stuck in the sand either.”

Bush has yet to take a position on the survey, but a White House spokeswoman said the president is committed to continuing the moratorium on drilling through 2012.

The fight over the survey comes as Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, steps up efforts to win support for another issue: opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration. Short of the votes needed to overcome a threatened Senate filibuster over the issue, Domenici is hoping to swing senators to his side by pointing to measures in the energy bill that would benefit their states.

Among these is a provision sought by farm state senators to double the amount of ethanol, a corn-based fuel, that would have to be added to the nation’s gasoline supply. A spokesman for Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) said that if the energy measure included a number of “job-friendly” measures that would benefit his home state, including an $800-million federal loan guarantee for a power-plant project and a provision to increase tax credits for fuel produced from soybeans, his boss would be “hard-pressed” not to vote for the bill, even if it included Arctic drilling.

But Domenici has said he will drop the Arctic drilling provision if he cannot put together enough votes to overcome a filibuster that could jeopardize passage of the entire energy bill.

Democrats have complained about being shut out of negotiations and on Monday they called on the Republican committee chairmen to add to the bill a provision, backed by a majority of the Senate, to require utilities to generate more electricity from alternative sources, such as solar and wind power. Proponents said it would ease shortages and price spikes in natural-gas supplies.

The energy bill is expected to include language to promote construction of a $20-billion 2,100-mile pipeline to carry Alaskan natural gas to the lower 48 states and provide billions of dollars in tax breaks to encourage conservation and production. It also includes a number of initiatives that were part of Bush’s 2001 energy plan, such as $2 billion for technology to make coal-fired power plants less polluting and a cap on the nuclear industry’s liability for accidents.

If left in the legislation, the inventory of offshore oil and gas resources could lead to a tight vote on the final bill -- even if the Arctic drilling provision were dropped.

“Due to the importance our constituents place on protecting Florida’s shores, it would be difficult for our delegation to support an energy bill that includes any language authorizing an inventory of [offshore] resources,” said a letter being circulated Monday among the Florida delegation.

Florida lawmakers have expressed concern that the survey could endanger the state’s tourism industry. The provision also has drawn objections from Republicans in other states, including Sens. Elizabeth Hanford Dole of North Carolina and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine.

California Gov. Gray Davis also has weighed in on the survey, writing in a letter to congressional negotiators, “When it comes to our coast, Californians speak with one voice.”

In June, the Senate defeated an effort to strip the inventory from a Republican-drafted bill. But that bill was later dropped in favor of a version, written by Democrats, that did not include the controversial provision. The inventory language was not in the House energy bill approved earlier this year.

This is not the first time Bush has dealt with the issue. In 2001, responding to objections from Gov. Bush, the president reduced drilling opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico and agreed to spend $235 million to cancel unused oil and gas leases elsewhere off Florida and in the Everglades.

In addition, a number of California officials have come out against an effort to give liability protection to producers of the gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether), which has been used to reduce air pollution but which has been widely blamed for groundwater contamination.

Industry officials have pushed for the provision, contending that Congress was responsible for promoting the use of MTBE by requiring cleaner-burning gasoline. They said that it would not prevent suits for negligence, such as mishandling of MTBE, but that it would prevent plaintiffs from claiming MTBE was a “defective” product.

Consumer activist Ralph Nader also sent a letter to negotiators objecting, saying the liability shield would shift “tens of billions of dollars in toxic cleanup costs from the biggest oil companies in the nation to taxpayers and drinking-water ratepayers.”