Pro-offshore US drilling bills won't pass before 2009: Barton

Washington (Platts)--25Apr2007

The ranking Republican on the US House Energy and Commerce Committee, Joe
Barton, said Wednesday there is "not a prayer of a chance" for any legislation
authorizing additional offshore oil and natural gas exploration and
development to pass this session of Congress.

"There are different majorities now. The Democrats and the environmental
community," the Texas Republican said. "The last thing the environmentalists
want is a pro-supply energy policy."

Environmentalists have questioned whether the economic benefits outweigh
the potential risks created by offshore drilling, but he added that "it is
more of an emotional issue" with many environmental groups.

He told a conference of energy marketers in Washington that "there is a
little better chance" the Democrats would agree to open up more onshore sites
to development.

On the sidelines of the conference, Barton said that while the previous,
Republican-controlled House passed some legislation that opened up part of the
eastern Gulf of Mexico, that legislation "wasn't what folks like me would have
liked to have had," he said.

Barton said there were "tremendous oil and gas reserves" on the Outer
Continental Shelf that could be recoverable with new drilling technologies but
they remain "totally off-limits."

"You have all of the eastern coastline that has never been explored," he
said. "It defies logic that when you drill wells off the shores of Louisiana
and Texas that there wouldn't be something along the East Coast, too."