White House pressed to stop offshore drilling
JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
04/16/2009
(04-16) 14:29 PDT San Francisco, CA (AP) --
Dressed as sea turtles, jellyfish and other marine life, environmentalists were among dozens of people to pack a public hearing Thursday to press Interior Secretary Ken Salazar not to open new areas of the West Coast to oil drilling.
The public forum, the last of four such meetings around the country with Salazar, also drew state and federal lawmakers concerned about the effects any expansion of offshore drilling could have on the region's economy and natural beauty.
Sen. Barbara Boxer drew cheers from the crowd as she emphatically told Salazar that California opposes such action.
"Our state is saying clearly to you today, no," she declared at the opening of the hearing at the UC San Francisco Mission Bay campus.
The Democratic senator said the California coastline is a huge economic asset to the state "just as it is," noting the area is a $24 billion industry, including tourism, that employs 390,000 people.
President Barack Obama has said his focus is on the need to develop renewable energy sources - biomass, solar and wind energy and research into electric-hybrid transportation - and to shift away from oil dependence, but a sweeping ban on drilling across much of the country's coastal waters was scrapped last October.
So far, Salazar has been cautious when discussing offshore drilling, and has called for more study and public input before final decisions are made.
At a news conference outside the hearing, he said he hoped to be able to release details of the Obama administration's energy plan - which would set forth details about offshore and onshore development - sometime this year. He would not be more specific.
"My high expectations are that this will happen in 2009, and that we'll have a map and a way forward," Salazar said.
Salazar has said he thought the Bush energy plan was a "headlong rush" to exploit new resources without proper study of environmental impacts.
Salazar slowed down the 5-year-plan's implementation, scheduling these regional meetings in each of the areas potentially affected by new drilling: the Gulf of Mexico, areas off the Alaska coast, and the East and West coasts of the U.S.
An Interior Department spokesman said the secretary is trying to make sure the proposal has "maximum public input."
"He believes the previous administration was rushing to judgment on this issue, and wants to make sure that whatever decisions are made are done carefully and with scrutiny," said Frank Quimby, the spokesman.
There are 1.7 billion acres under federal jurisdiction that are submerged beneath the sea that could be opened to drilling for oil and natural gas under a current proposal, according to a report by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service.
In California, Salazar said the areas under consideration for new drilling are off the coast of Point Arena, Santa Maria and the San Juan Capistrano-Oceanside basins. There is currently offshore drilling in California from leases granted before the state moratorium in 1981, a large portion of it in the Santa Barbara Channel.
The Interior Department reports that in 2007, the Outer Continental Shelf accounted for 14 percent of the nation's natural gas production and 27 percent of its oil production.
Advocates for the petroleum industry argue that offshore oil drilling will provide state, federal and local governments with revenue in a down economy and will help the country lessen its dependence on foreign oil.
"Right now we import 60 to 65 percent of our oil from a foreign country," said Joe Sparano, president of the Western States Petroleum Industry, to hisses from the audience. "There are 10 billion barrels of oil off the shore of California. That would allow us to replace California's foreign imports for 35 years."
The hearing Thursday was intended only to address expanded oil drilling off California, but environmentalists also aimed to put pressure on the Obama administration regarding drilling along the entire West Coast and Alaska, wearing costumes of polar bears and other animals they say are threatened by oil drilling.
"The Arctic Ocean is ground zero for this," said Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice. "(Drilling) leases have already taken place in the Arctic. There's been no moratorium over the last few years in the Bering Sea like there has been on the East and West coasts."
Fishermen concerned with the effects of oil drilling on fisheries were also represented at the hearing...
