US Senate gets ready to tackle offshore drilling

Washington: Offshore oil drilling, which has dominated energy debates in the US presidential campaign, is now coming to the Senate.

The House late last Tuesday approved on a 236-189 vote legislation that would open waters 80 kilometres off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts to oil and natural gas development - if the adjacent states agree to go along.

The legislation now goes to the Senate, where Democratic leaders are expected to mold it to their liking in the next few days.

So far, the Senate has indicated it has no intention of going as far as the House in expanding offshore oil and gas drilling beyond the western Gulf of Mexico, where energy companies have been pumping oil and gas for decades.

At least two proposals being crafted in the Senate would allow drilling in some areas along the southern Atlantic from Virginia to Georgia. But the Pacific and remainder of the Atlantic seaboard would not be affected.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, also has said he would make way for a vote on a broader Republican drilling proposal that would allow states to opt for offshore exploration from New England to the Pacific Northwest and share in the royalties that are collected.

Congress has renewed bans on drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico off Florida annually for the past 26 years.

But expanded offshore drilling has become a mantra of Republican energy policy that has been felt in both presidential and congressional campaigns, even though lifting the drilling ban would have little if any impact on gasoline prices or produce any more oil for years.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain vowed at the recently concluded Republican convention to push for new offshore oil and natural gas drilling as delegates chanted "drill, baby, drill." His Democratic rival, Barack Obama, also has said he supports more drilling as part of a broader energy package.

But in the Senate the issue of drilling remains divisive. No matter what the proposal, it is expected to face a filibuster and no one has yet to predict with certainty that any drilling bill will garner the 60 votes needed to overcome such a roadblock.

The drilling measure passed late last Tuesday in a largely party-line vote by the House is unlikely to survive the Senate.

President George W. Bush, who has called for ending the offshore drilling bans, signalled he would veto the legislation if it reached his desk, arguing that it would stifle offshore oil development instead of increasing it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, called the bill "a new direction in energy policy ... that will end our dependence on foreign oil" by shifting federal subsidies from promoting the oil industry to spurring development of alternative energy sources and energy efficiency.

The House measure would allow drilling in waters 80 kilometres from shore almost everywhere from New England to Washington state as long as a state agrees to go along with energy development off its coast. Beyond 160 kilometres, no state approval would be required. The drilling ban would remain in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

But Republicans called the drilling measure a ruse to provide political cover to Democrats feeling pressure to support more drilling at a time of high gasoline prices.

The bill would not share royalties from energy production with the adjacent states, which Republicans said would keep states from accepting any new drilling off their beaches.