Senators Feinstein, Graham, and 25 of Their Colleagues Urge Support for an Amendment to the Energy Bill Protecting the Outer Continental Shelf
May 15, 2003

Washington D.C. - U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Bob Graham (D-FL) and a bipartisan coalition of 25 other Senators are seeking today to delete an Energy Bill provision that threatens existing protection of sensitive coastal and marine areas off the coasts of California, Florida, Oregon, Washington, and the Atlantic Coast.

In a letter to their colleagues, the Senators said: "We strongly believe that Section 105 of the energy bill is inconsistent with more than 20 years of bipartisan legislative and administrative actions to protect environmentally sensitive and economically important coastal areas from offshore oil and gas activity.... In April, the House of Representatives agreed on a bipartisan basis to an amendment identical to the one we will offer. The language requiring an oil and gas inventory of the outer continental shelf was removed from the House energy bill. The Senate should also remove this provision from its energy bill."

In fact, Senators Graham, Feinstein and others plan to introduce an amendment soon that would remove Section 105 from the Energy Bill.

Section 105 requires the Department of the Interior to conduct an inventory of all potential oil and natural gas resources in the entire continental shelf, including those areas currently subject to moratoria. The section would allow the use of seismic surveys, dart core sampling, and other exploration technologies, which are inconsistent with current moratoria. The impacts of these kinds of technologies do not constitute an innocuous study of oil and gas resources since they would negatively impact coastal and marine areas, some of which are not even available for drilling.

Section 105 also requires Interior to report on "impediments" to the development of offshore oil and gas, including the role of coastal states and localities, as well as moratoria. The senators believe that "it is unconscionable that Congress would characterize the rights of states as an 'impediment' to the goals of the federal government."

The other co-signers of the letter include Senators Cantwell, Wyden, Schumer, Nelson (FL), Boxer, Lautenberg, Edwards, Kerry, Hollings, Dole, Murray, Lieberman, Kennedy, Leahy, Corzine, Snowe, Collins, Dodd, Clinton, Gregg, Sarbanes, Feingold, Reed, Chafee, and Mikulski.