Get Why Your Coast Now Hangs By a Thread: 

How The Oil Lobby Just Took Over Florida, and Next Plans To Try To Convince The US Senate To Give Away Billions Of Federal Dollars And Put Drilling Rigs On Your Own State's Coastline.....

By Richard Charter
Published: July 2006

Richard Pombo (R-CA).

Recently, on the evening of June 29, 2006, rushing to get to a congressional baseball game and then out of Washington for a legislative recess, the US House of Representatives voted by a margin of 232-187 to terminate the twenty-five-year bipartisan moratorium on offshore drilling in sensitive coastal waters.  The moratorium is a cornerstone coastal conservation law that has enjoyed the support of the last three presidents and each session of Congress since 1981.  Its renewal for the coming year was included in the federal budget this year by the White House.  Instead, a rapid-fire assault on our nationwide coastal protections was engineered by Representatives Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Adam Putnam (R-FL).  First, the House leadership had to prevent congressional consideration of an amendment to raise fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. Next, when all of the side deals were made, and large sums of money promised, the House voted to immediately remove the congressional offshore drilling moratorium and to also end similar presidential coastal protections - first imposed by former President George H.W. Bush, then extended by President Clinton until 2012.  The resulting disastrous House bill, HR 4761, also known as the “Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act”, would instantly remove all of the reliable measures that have protected the US east coast, west coast, Florida, and Alaska’s fishery-rich Bristol Bay from offshore drilling rigs for the past quarter-century.

The Pombo drilling bill, if adopted, would inflict serious damage on coastal management in this country and ultimately would hand our most sensitive coastal waters over to Big Oil.  In place of longstanding secure protections for our coast, Mr. Pombo’s bill instead substitutes a complex, repetitive, and unreliable new bureaucracy requiring every coastal state legislature and governor to constantly beg for continued protection from offshore drilling. At stake in this decision are the remote rocky shores of Maine, the important fisheries of Massachusetts’ Georges Bank, the placid wetlands of Virginia’s Assateague Island, the pristine Outer Banks of North Carolina, the headlands and barrier islands of South Carolina and Georgia, Florida’s white sand beaches, and the entire US west coast, from Santa Monica Bay and Mendocino to the spectacular sea stacks and rugged beaches of Oregon and Washington State.  Never has so much of America’s long-protected shoreline been up for grabs by the oil and gas industry, but that’s what’s at risk right now as attention next turns to the US Senate.

How Mr. Pombo was able to

“Divide and Conquer” the Florida House Delegation:

Over two decades of consistent near-unanimity among Florida’s large and predominantly Republican delegation in the US House of Representatives has facilitated the continuity of the congressional moratorium that also protects sensitive areas elsewhere around the US coastline.  Hoping to pressure Florida’s Representatives into sacrificing the shorelines of all of the other coastal states whose own congressional delegations had assisted them over the years to sustain Florida’s protections, Mr. Pombo offered the Gulf Coast of Florida the only supposedly permanent category of protection contained in his complicated new offshore drilling bill.  Mr. Pombo’s final offer to Florida consisted of what he called a “permanent” offshore oil and gas leasing ban extending from Florida’s Gulf Coast seaward into the Eastern Gulf of Mexico - ranging from 125 to 234 miles offshore at some points - out to what is known as the “Military Mission Line”, within which live-fire Defense Department air and sea exercises take place.  Unfortunately, most of the Florida Representatives, with prodding from Florida’s Governor Jeb Bush, took Mr. Pombo’s bait and sacrificed the rest of the US coastline to try to save part of their own.

Even Mr. Pombo’s promised new quasi-protection along Florida’s Gulf Coast cannot be considered reliably permanent, because its provisions can be readily reversed by any subsequent session of Congress or by any future president - as soon as the oil industry is ready to move closer to Florida’s shores and drill there.  And widely dispersed within Mr. Pombo’s illusory zone of protection for Florida, there are already nearly 100 active nine-square-mile undeveloped oil and gas leases that can still be drilled by the oil industry at any time.  Some of these already-leased non-producing tracts are located a mere fifteen miles off of Florida’s crystalline Panhandle beaches.  Even this so-called Pombo “protection” only covers the eastern portion of the Florida Panhandle beaches, leaving the western part of the Panhandle and Florida’s entire Atlantic coast immediately vulnerable.

Substituting Convoluted, Fake “Procedures”

In Place of Twenty-Five Years of Real Coastal Protection:

The Pombo drilling bill presents only a very tentative and shaky substitute in exchange for the dependable quarter-century of protection that would otherwise continue to set aside sensitive US waters at least until June of 2012.  In place of the existing protections for US west coast and east coast states, the Pombo bill offers only a fifty-mile buffer zone along the shoreline and presents states with the future option of requesting a hypothetical one-hundred mile buffer zone.  Even this minimal protection continues only if each state can meet certain complex criteria in an ongoing effort to try to maintain it.  In waters located beyond one-hundred miles from a state’s shoreline, all protections would be immediately removed and oil and gas leasing could proceed right away, with no input from the state.

The Pombo drilling formula is deliberately complicated and designed to be extremely vulnerable to political pressures easily exerted at the state level by the oil industry.  Within fifty miles of a state’s shoreline, the state legislature - with the concurrence of the governor - would have just one year from enactment of the Pombo bill to request protection from offshore gas leasing, and a state would have only three years to request protection from a combination of offshore oil and gas leasing.   Absent these timely requests from the state, all of the waters along a state’s coastline would be opened to offshore drilling for both oil and gas right away.  For the area extending from fifty miles off a state’s coast to one-hundred miles offshore, the state legislature and the governor would be forced to submit a series of what are called “petitions” - at least once every five years - to the Secretary of Interior, constantly asking for continued protection.  The Secretary of Interior could, at any time, simply deny such requests by any state on the grounds that exempting the area from drilling could threaten “marine resources” - defined in the bill as including oil and gas.

Even within any of the resulting “protected” areas that might be granted, additional oil and gas leasing, exploration, and development would still be permitted by the federal government - as long as these offshore leases could be exploited using directional drilling originating from locations outside of the “protected” zone.  Florida’s Atlantic coast, now fully sheltered by both the congressional moratorium and the current presidential leasing withdrawals (until 2012), would instead be exposed to drilling pressures in the same manner as all other coastal states, requiring continual “petitions” from Florida’s governor and legislature to replace protection so willingly surrendered by fourteen out of the twenty-five members of the Florida delegation on the House floor.

A Complex New Gamble for Coastal States:

The arcane procedures outlined in the Pombo bill have been specifically constructed to continually thwart the creation of any future coastal protection for states with legislatures that meet only part of each year - or with legislatures that convene every two years - and the bill is designed to eliminate entirely the prospect of any future protection for states where governors and state legislatures will be ultimately unable to reach agreement. The ability of any coastal state to ensure continued drilling prohibitions by meeting the multiplicity of requirements established by this legislation represents an unlikely gamble at best.

In order to continually tempt coastal states to willingly relinquish any coastal protection they might otherwise contemplate requesting, the Department of Interior is instructed, by the Pombo bill, to periodically provide financial estimates to each coastal state to show how large of a possible share of federal revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling its own state, and the coastal local governments within the state, might anticipate receiving if they were to decide to allow drilling to occur offshore.  Faced with this constant drumbeat of proffered money - up to half of the federal revenues resulting from federal offshore development off its shores - no state can be expected to long stand steadfast in protecting its coast.

In Alaska, for example, the current political climate, exemplified by a pro-drilling governor and a well-oiled state legislature, would be unlikely to lead to any continued federal leasing prohibitions whatsoever, thereby consigning the long-protected salmon fishing grounds of Bristol Bay to offshore drilling now.  States along the Lower-48 Atlantic coast most immediately threatened by the Pombo drilling formula would appear to be Virginia and South Carolina, at least initially, due to political divisions among their state’s elected officials.  Amidst the close quarters of constrained geography, strong ocean currents, and occasional hurricane-force winds along the Atlantic coast, routine drilling rig discharges and periodic oil spills originating off of one state will most certainly damage the shorelines and fisheries of nearby states.  These kinds of inevitable regional adverse impacts are likely to quickly set off interstate disputes and even lawsuits, fulfilling part of the intent of the Pombo approach.  Under the Pombo bill, a coastal state, if it adjoins another nearby state that openly invites drilling, theoretically would be granted the ability to voice its objection to leasing in the nearest waters of the adjoining state, but only if its own governor decides to intervene.  An affected state could object, however, only if another state’s gas drilling would occur within twenty-five miles of any point on its own shoreline, or if oil drilling is anticipated within fifty miles of any point on its own shoreline, and the state’s governor would have a very limited time in which to object.  State legislatures would have no voice in such decisions.  The Secretary of Interior, according to the Pombo bill, may or may not honor such requests by a governor for a buffer zone between adjacent states.

The Multi-Billion Dollar Question: Will the Senate Cave in Too?

Next, the Pombo bill, or something remotely like it, could be considered in the US Senate, where such legislation faces an uncertain future.  Senator Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico), who chairs the Energy Committee, has prepared his own separate drilling bill, aimed at enabling expanded offshore leasing in a large portion of the “Eastern Gulf of Mexico Planning Area”, further to the west and well off of Florida’s Gulf Coast.  The offshore region there, known as Lease Sale 181, is not currently under congressional moratorium nor protected by the presidential leasing withdrawals.  An even larger and entirely new offshore area, known as Lloyd Ridge, is located immediately south of Lease Sale 181 in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.  Lloyd Ridge, for now, remains under a protective leasing moratorium but is also reportedly being targeted for new offshore drilling plans in the Senate.  Behind-the-scenes negotiations are said to be now quietly proceeding between Florida’s Republican Senator Mel Martinez and Energy Committee Chairman Domenici to determine how close drilling will actually be allowed to come to Florida’s Gulf Coast if any potential Senate drilling bill is considered.  If a secret agreement emerges from these ongoing negotiations, the result will likely proceed to the Senate Floor for consideration, which could then open the way for all, or the worst portions, of Rep. Pombo’s House bill to also find a way into becoming law. 

The real danger of the House bill will emerge in the event that the Senate passes any kind of energy bill at all, since this would provide Mr. Pombo with the opportunity to see his own bill prevail in a subsequent House/Senate Conference Committee behind closed doors.  Since nothing as radical and extreme as the Pombo bill could survive on the Senate Floor, any such Joint Conference Committee would try to work out the differences between the Pombo bill passed by the House and an entirely different type of energy legislation that might emerge from the Senate.  Unfortunately, there would be no public scrutiny over the ensuing negotiations between House and Senate Conferees.  The hazard in all of this for America’s coastline is that some of the most dangerous provisions of the Pombo bill could then be quietly accepted by the Senate Conferees as part of any final bill that’s eventually sent to President Bush for his signature.  That presidential signature would then immediately spell the end of twenty-five years of coastal protection for America’s most treasured beaches and coastal parklands, ironically coming right in the midst of the upcoming mid-term election cycle.

It would seem to represent common sense to expect that our elected officials might want to first take steps to bring about more fuel-efficient vehicles, or to accelerate the development of renewable energy resources, since these easy and painless policies would save energy and money right away.  But the oil industry won’t let that happen.  Offshore drilling threatens our coasts but will not lower oil or gas prices, especially since any new oil or gas resources that might be found would not be produced for several years, even under the Pombo formula.  As Americans, we now stand at a crossroads, poised to destroy the very precedents for protecting our natural treasures that our founders established as core values for our nation.  Surely, in the words of the late David Brower, “We are not yet so desperate we must burn our cathedrals for firewood.”

You might want to write to your Senators about saving your coast right now, before it’s too late, and to remember this story of political intrigue when it comes time to vote this November.  Your favorite coastline depends on the outcome, and its very survival can no longer be assured.

It would appear to be a fundamental principle of nature that we take for granted that which we value most in our lives, as long as we see no looming threat.  For the coasts that we all love, that threat has arrived, and the special coastal places Americans treasure the most are now in immediate peril.  It is time to make certain that the US Senate does not sell out our coasts, lest we lose this essential part of our lives, the economic well being of our coastal communities, and our national heritage, forever.

 

See how your own Representative voted on the Pombo drilling bill in the House at:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll356.xml

prepared by Richard Charter, waterway@monitor.net, July 10, 2006