WASHINGTON — House Republicans have abandoned plans to lift the ban on offshore drilling along most of the country's coastline as part of new energy legislation, GOP congressmen said yesterday.

Lawmakers from Florida and other coastal states objected to the proposal endorsed by the House Resources Committee.

The House is expected next week to consider legislation aimed at expanding U.S. refinery capacity, including several provisions that critics say would ease clean-air requirements on refineries and power plants.

Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., said the offshore-drilling provision, which he opposed, would be dropped from consideration as part of the energy legislation.

Pombo prefers a less-sweeping approach that would allow a waiver of the drilling ban to individual states if they request it.

Both proposals have been sharply criticized by environmentalists as well as lawmakers from some coastal states, especially Florida. They argue that the offshore areas outside the central and western Gulf of Mexico should remain off limits to natural-gas or oil drilling for environmental and tourism reasons.

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., who has argued that the country needs all the natural gas it can get and who sponsored the drilling proposal, said he will try to get the provision considered as an amendment on the House floor.

Pombo said that although the country's offshore-energy resources should be developed, "the states should have ultimate authority over resource production, including the power to prevent it, in the deep waters off their coasts."

He plans to pursue a proposal to allow for a waiver of the drilling ban if a state wants to develop oil or natural-gas resources off its coast.

Pombo and GOP leaders also have decided to avoid a fight over another contentious issue — drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska — in the upcoming energy legislation. The House repeatedly has approved opening ANWR to oil companies, but each time the matter died in the Senate because of the threat of a filibuster.

Pombo plans to pursue the ANWR drilling issue — and perhaps his offshore-drilling proposal — as part of the budget process, which is not subject to filibuster, said Jennifer Zuccarelli, spokeswoman for the Resources Committee.

Environmentalists have complained that House Republicans are using the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the disruptions the storms caused to the Gulf Coast oil and natural-gas supplies, as an excuse to end anti-drilling safeguards that have been put in place by presidents and Congress since 1981.

The drilling bans apply to virtually all waters of the Outer Continental Shelf outside of the central and western Gulf of Mexico.