US House resources panel votes down amendment to OCS bill

Washington (Platts)--22Jun2006

The House Resources Committee on Thursday voted down on a voice vote and
amendment that would have gutted the compromise hybrid bill that would have
partially lifted the moratorium on offshore drilling proposed by Committee
Chairman Richard Pombo.

Representative Mark Udall, Democrat-Colorado, proposed inserting language
based on a Senate bill that would have mandated a lease sale within a year of
enactment in the Lease Sale 181 area of the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

That legislation was proposed by Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, Republican-New Mexico, and the committee's
ranking Democrat, New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman.

Udall told the committee that he believed that given the support the
Senate legislation has "in the other body," his amendment would have a better
chance of winning approval in both houses and eventually being signed into
law.

But Rep Bobby Jindal, Republican-Louisiana, said the proposal ignored the
effort to revise federal royalty payments to coastal states. He also said that
House and Senate members are currently in negotiations on that issue.

Pombo's bill would codify the presidential drilling moratorium--which
expires in 2012--into law and ban gas and oil leasing within 50 miles of the
US coastline permanently. But states would be allowed to "opt out" of the ban
if its governor and legislature agree.

Those states would get up to 75% of royalty revenues from resources
located between the point where state waters end and 12 miles offshore.
Coastal states also would be given a year from the bill's enactment to decide
whether to permit or deny gas leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf between
50 miles and 100 miles of their shores, according to the bill.

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