Feds debate drilling: Should states decide?
By NEIL HUGHES
STAFF WRITER
Charlotte Sun
July 22, 2008
The offshore drilling discussion isn’t just limited to Florida.
Since federal bans were put in place nearly two decades ago, most of the U.S. coastline has been hands-off for oil companies.
Politically, lifting the ban used to be a nonstarter. Economically, expanding offshore drilling wasn’t as feasible.
Funny how things change when the price of a barrel of oil doubles in two years.
Many Republicans believe increasing domestic production by obtaining new reserves in banned areas could help reduce the price of oil. Most Democrats feel oil companies should exhaust the leased, untapped 65 million acres — both onshore and off — that they currently have the rights to.
President Bush recently rescinded the executive order banning offshore drilling for most of the U.S. coast. Congress has its own ban in place that must be repealed before new leases could be granted.
As members of the U.S. Congress consider lifting the offshore drilling moratorium, there is a plethora of issues that need to be resolved. For starters, should individual states be allowed to decide their fate on offshore oil drilling? What states would control what parts of the coastline? Where would any windfall taxes be directed?
Officials in Southwest Florida generally support the idea of states’ rights on offshore drilling.
“Let states decide for their own destiny,” said Rep. Vern Buchanan, Republican in Florida’s 13th District.
Could the lease borders in the Gulf of Mexico be drawn so that other states control Florida’s waters? Rep. Tim Mahoney, Florida-16th District, said it’s a real concern.
“Louisiana and Mississippi and Texas, those folks have made a value decision a long time ago that they wanted to have the oil industry off their coast,” the Democrat said. “They have the infrastructure there, and they want to make sure that the biggest financial benefit of oil being pumped off of Florida’s coast goes back to Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. We’re going to have to make sure that we have our fair share.”
Mahoney also believes that a majority of the financial benefit of offshore drilling will go to other Gulf states that have an established oilproducing infrastructure in place.
“Basically Florida is an incremental pickup, so they (oil companies) see this as a windfall profit,” Mahoney said. “On Florida’s side, we’re not going to see Chevron moving a big research and development center to Sarasota or Port Charlotte.”
Both Buchanan and Mahoney are joined by Florida Sen. Bill Nelson in opposition to offshore drilling. They feel it places Florida’s tourism economy and natural beauty at risk.
Nelson has introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate that would ban unregulated speculative trading of oil futures.
“Sometimes I have been a lonely voice because it is easy and seductive to say, with $4 gas, we ought to drill,” Nelson said on the Senate floor in June. “But I hope I have demonstrated to the Senate that the problem is much more complicated and that we cannot simply drill our way out of the problem.”
Buchanan said he agrees with the Senate’s push to remove speculators from the oil market. He said he believes they have falsely inflated the price of oil by as much as 30 percent.
Adding to the price of gas, Mahoney said, is excessive spending and borrowing by the federal government. He said a balanced budget would go a long way in reducing gas prices.
“If we said to the world, ‘Guess what, we’re not borrowing any money anymore;’ that could be the biggest thing that we could do to reduce the cost of gas at the pump,” Mahoney said.
Beyond financial reform, all three officials hope to see federal dollars directed toward alternative energy sources.
“We’ve got to be willing to invest in our universities and other sources to find other sources of energy other than this,” Buchanan said.
He cited France’s reliance on nuclear power as a start. The French, he said, utilized American perfection of nuclear power and embraced it to avoid commitment to petroleum.
“They (the French) did not want to be in the situation that we’re in today,” Buchanan said. “We’re basically hooked on this drug called gas.”