Despite eleventh-hour negotiations, House and Senate leaders headed home for the November elections without reaching a compromise on legislation to open up more of the federal offshore to oil and natural gas leasing. The Republican leadership is expected to take up the issue of coastal drilling in the lame-duck session, which — depending on the outcome of the elections — could make a deal even more elusive.

“I am disappointed that we are recessing without an OCS bill,” Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and author of the Senate OCS bill, said Friday.

“I hope the House will take the necessary time in October to step back and reflect on a number of compromises the Senate has offered to break the current impasse. I hope the House recognizes what is politically possible in the Senate. I hope they take time to listen to businesses, manufacturers and consumers who unanimously agree that the Senate bill is a big step beyond current law and opens up important new areas for energy development while respecting states’ interests and needs.”

The Senate bill “has the strong support of the affected states and has the votes in both houses to be sent to the president’s desk. I continue to believe the 109th Congress can achieve this important accomplishment,” Domenici said.

“They look like they’re going to have to take it up in the lame-duck session. Time has run out,” said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate energy panel.

Since returning after Labor Day, Republican leaders and committee staff members have conducted a “whole series” of talks to reconcile the vastly different House and Senate bills that seek to open previously closed portions of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to leasing, he noted. “They haven’t quit. They haven’t given up” totally on passing an OCS bill this year, Wicker said.

But the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the November elections adds a new wrinkle. “That’s why there was this sense of urgency to try to get it done before the elections,” he said. “Depending on the results of the November elections, it could make it that much harder to get a deal in the lame-duck session,” Wicker noted.

“Congressional staff [members] have indicated to us that they will be working on this during lame duck,” said Paul Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, which supports expanded OCS development.

The negotiations reached a stalemate because while Senate leaders would prefer that the House accept their narrower OCS bill (S. 3711) in place of the more expansive House offshore bill (HR 4761), House leaders have resisted the overture.

The Senate bill would make available 8.3 million acres in the Lease Sale 181 area in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and in a tract south of Lease Sale 181 for oil and natural gas leasing. The more comprehensive House measure seeks to open up a greater swath of the OCS that has been closed to producers. It would give states bordering the Pacific and East Coasts the option to allow oil and gas drilling within 100 miles of their shorelines.

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