June 29, 2006

Mr. Speaker, even if I supported offshore drilling – which I don’t – I certainly wouldn’t do it with through this fiscally reckless and convoluted bill.

 The Domestic Energy Production through Offshore Exploration and Equitable Treatment of State Holdings Act makes it far easier for states to allow drilling than to prevent it. It bribes states into allowing offshore drilling by increasing their share of royalties from 27 percent to 50 percent, at a cost to the federal government of $600 billion over 60 years. If a state takes no action to facilitate natural gas drilling in the immediate year or oil drilling in the next three years, then this law would open its waters for drilling. In order to maintain a moratorium on drilling, a state legislature would have to vote to prohibit drilling every five years. How many states will be able to resist billions of dollars in exchange for doing nothing?

 H.R. 4761 also guts the environmental review process and makes all other uses of the Outer Continental Shelf subordinate to drilling, even in states than continue to ban drilling. According to the bill, “No Federal agency may permit construction or operation of any facility, that will be incompatible with... oil and gas or natural gas leasing.” So if your state wants to operate a marine sanctuary, it better pass the Pombo oil-compatibility test.

 All this, and for what?  Drilling is already allowed in areas that have 80 percent of offshore oil and natural gas reserves.  This bill simultaneously endangers our coasts and delays an urgently needed transformation to a clean energy economy.  I vote no to yet another Republican attempt to maintain our oil addiction.