Offshore Oil Drilling Debate Renewed in Senate Hearing

The national debate over offshore oil drilling picked up again today at a hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Though discussion wasn't as heated as in the '08 Presidential campaign that saw the Republican Party rally around the "Drill, Baby, Drill" slogan, the trade-offs Senators are going to have to weigh when settling national policy were put on full view.

The Committee passed its portion of the climate bill in June, and it included an amendment that would allow drilling for oil as close as 45 miles from Florida’s Gulf Coast – and even closer in the Destin Dome area off Pensacola.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, working on a climate bill proposal of their own, see increased offshore drilling as a necessary compromise for securing passage of a climate law that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

Today's hearings were called to address concerns raised last June on the environmental impacts of offshore development.

“Access to the vast resources of the OCS [outer continental shelf] is critical; we need it and it’s good for this country,” Shell president Marvin Odum argued at the time.

But many senators and organizations remain far from convinced that tells the whole story.

In July 2008, President George W. Bush lifted a moratorium on drilling on the outer continental shelf of the lower 48 states that had been in place since his father signed it into law in 1990. The next October, Congress allowed its own ban, which had been in place since 1982 and largely overlapped with the presidential one, to expire. That allowed the Bush administration to direct the Minerals Management Service, which had been prohibited under the moratoriums from selling leases for OCS areas, to draft a plan for re-opening those areas to drilling.

It was a plan that was immediately put on hold by Obama’s Interior Department this year, which put in place measures to ensure more careful analysis of offshore exploration’s impacts. A U.S. appeals court concurred with the move, declaring in April that the Bush plans had considered only effects on coastal communities and left out effects on the marine environment.

On Capitol Hill, some senators bemoan the recent developments.

“It’s now been over a year since the offshore moratorium was lifted, but there have been many executive actions and perhaps a few that have not been taken that are taking us in the opposite direction,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, citing Environmental Protection Agency delays in issuing air pollution permits for oil exploration ships and the setting aside of critical habitat for polar bears in Alaska.

The impatience of Murkowski and others to expand OCS drilling has run up against the impatience of others to get emissions-reducing legislation in place.

Drilling proponents say drilling is necessary for a U.S. economy that will depend on fossil fuels for many years to come, while others, like Sen. John Kerry, say drilling is necessary for political reasons -- to get the 60 votes a Senate climate bill will need for passage.

Still disagreement remains on how much offshore drilling will contribute to the volume of U.S. domestic oil production as well as on the scope of the impact it will have on coastal communities, marine wildlife and habitat, and the economic activities that depend on an intact coastal ecosystem.

The top concern of many proponents of offshore expansion is weaning the U.S. off dependence on foreign sources, which, they are quick to point out, leads to sending money to potentially hostile foreign suppliers.