Bush has Congress over a barrel

WASHINGTON — By lifting a long-standing White House ban on new oil and gas drilling off the nation's coastlines Monday President Bush pressured Congress to take a similar step, stoking the battle over how the U.S. should respond to high gasoline prices.

Bush's decision to lift the executive order imposed by his father in 1990 will have no effect unless Congress cancels its own ban on offshore drilling.

But now that the price of gasoline consistently sits above $4 a gallon, Bush's action places the possibility of new drilling squarely in the public debate and gives him a political cudgel. Lawmakers are increasingly nervous about high gas prices in an election year, and Bush made clear his intent to use drilling against the majority party in Congress.

In a Rose Garden statement at the White House Monday, Bush argued that allowing drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines would ease pressure on oil prices by increasing domestic production. Bush also urged Congress to approve other steps, such as allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and he blamed Democratic opposition to drilling for the current run-up in gasoline prices.

"This means that the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the U.S. Congress," Bush said. "Now the ball is squarely in Congress' court," he added. "Democratic leaders can show that they have finally heard the frustrations of the American people by matching the action I have taken today."

Some drilling advocates have cited estimates that 18 billion barrels of oil could be recovered if the ban is removed. Democrats and critics in the environmental community said that even if the obstacles to new drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and part of the Gulf of Mexico were lifted quickly, production of gasoline from offshore oil would be years away, refineries are running at or near capacity, and there would be little, if any, quick impact on supplies or prices.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., quickly rejected the president's challenge, countering that Bush should tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices by increasing supplies. He has refused to do so, claiming that the reserve was created to relieve a national emergency.

The president's position raised special concern among politicians from California, where an oil spill off Santa Barbara in 1969 led to worldwide publication of photographs showing oil-soaked birds and sludge-coated beaches.

"In California, we know offshore drilling is not the answer," said Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who called for development of alternative energy sources.

The presidential ban limits offshore drilling to areas off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and limited parts of Alaska. President Clinton had extended the order through 2012.

The congressional ban on new offshore drilling dates to 1981, when it was approved as part of an Interior Department appropriations bill. It has been renewed annually since.

On Monday, two key Democratic senators — West Virginia's Robert Byrd, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and California's Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Interior appropriations subcommittee — pledged to fight any effort to relax the ban.

Congressional Republicans have pushed Democrats to support expanded domestic oil production, and they plan a new effort next week to allow offshore drilling.

Jeff Eshelman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents oil and gas producers, said Bush's statement "places the pressure on Congress to act before the elections."

In a sign of the changing mood, Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., who voted in 2006 against relaxing the moratorium, said in a recent interview, "I am becoming more flexible on the issue, which is clearly a function of the crisis in which we find ourselves."

"What I hear all the time is ... I'm tired of sending all this money over to those people who hate us," he said. Jack Gerard, who this fall will become president of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade association, cheered Bush's action. "Clearly, the ground is shifting on energy policy," said Gerard, currently the head of the American Chemistry Council.

To Lisa Speer, director of the water and oceans program for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, Bush's action removes "one layer of protection [for the coasts]."

But she said that the battle to preserve the drilling ban has become tougher. "It's a reflection of the pressure that politicians are feeling on gas prices," she said. "Everybody has to be very vigilant over the next few months until Congress goes out."

Dennis Kelso, an executive vice president of the Ocean Conservancy, said, "While renewed offshore drilling will do little in the long or short term to help relieve a serious energy crisis, it does guarantee further ongoing destruction of our ocean resources."

The two presidential campaigns mirror the sharp differences. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, had previously expressed support for opening the continental shelf for exploration and production.

The campaign of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic nominee, responded that Americans needed to concentrate on conservation and alternative sources of energy, not simply opening new oil fields.