With gasoline prices rising again and violence threatening supplies of Middle East crude, the oil industry and its allies in Congress sense a golden opportunity to end the 25-year moratorium on drilling in the nation's coastal waters. Last month the House voted to lift the ban, enabling states to permit rigs just three miles from the beach. Now the Senate is pondering a separate measure that would spur offshore drilling.

If this isn't alarming enough, consider that a prime candidate for exploration is the dazzling coastline from San Diego to Laguna Beach, which features shallow water and promising geology. Then recall the 1969 blowout near Santa Barbara, which spewed crude for a solid year onto beaches south for 100 miles.

Now that we have your attention, there is some cause for optimism that sanity will prevail in Washington. The Senate bill, which may come up for a vote this week, is relatively limited. It would allow drilling for oil and natural gas in 8 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 miles from Florida. It also would create 125-mile buffers through 2022 for states on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

Still, the measure is correctly seen by California officials as a grave threat. Something worse could emerge from senators' efforts at reconciliation with the House bill. For example, both measures would for the first time share federal royalties from petroleum production with state governments. This creates a powerful incentive for cash-strapped states to grant offshore leases.

In addition, the House bill would allow exploration and production in U.S. coastal waters beginning 100 miles from shore. Anything closer would have to be approved by individual states. This would seem to protect California, with its nearly unanimous opposition to coastal drilling. But then again, state lawmakers haven't balanced a budget in six years, and the prospect of oil royalties could change the political climate in a fiscal emergency.

Nobody knows how much oil is sitting below California's continental shelf. But there are no credible estimates of reserves that begin to justify the environmental and economic risks posed by the industrialization of its coastal waters. A recent study by state officials found that what they called the “Ocean Economy” contributed $43 billion in 2000 alone.

To be sure, the United States needs to pump more domestic oil. But this Congress has refused to open even a tiny fraction of the giant Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, which contains vast petroleum reserves. ANWAR is on unpopulated, dry land; exploration thus poses astronomically less risk. And Congress and President Bush refuse to substantially improve vehicle fuel-economy standards or take other sensible steps to curtail demand for energy.

California's Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, have vowed to kill the coastal drilling legislation. Cheering them on is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. We can't think of a better time for such bipartisanship.