US House vote rules out opening OCS for gas drilling

Washington (Platts)--19May2006

By a 217-203 vote, the US House of Representatives late Thursday stripped
from the Interior Department's fiscal 2007 spending bill language that would
have opened all of the Outer Continental Shelf to natural gas drilling.
The chamber approved an amendment sponsored by Representatives Adam
Putnam, Republican-Florida, and Lois Capps, Democrat-California, that reversed
an amendment attached to the bill last week that would open all of the OCS to
gas-only drilling.
The amendment would have retained the moratorium that currently exists on
oil drilling in all of the OCS save the Gulf of Mexico and parts offshore
Alaska.
The vote on the Putnam-Capps amendment came after an hour of spirited
debate in the House Thursday evening in which lawmakers from Florida and
California said reversing the moratorium would harm their tourist industries
and offshore military testing.
Proponents of reversing the 25-year-old gas moratorium, led by
Representative John Peterson, Republican-Pennsylvania, said it was necessary
to end the drilling ban to curb the damaging effect soaring gas prices have
had on the US economy.
At press time the House was still voting on the overall spending package,
but it was expected to be approved.

 

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