Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signaled Monday that he endorsed a House Resources Committee budget proposal that would allow for oil and natural gas drilling in currently protected waters 125 miles off of the Sunshine State’s west coast.

The budget reconciliation package, offered by Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX), would codify the 125-mile buffer zone around the Florida peninsula in return for opening parts of the eastern Gulf of Mexico that are presently subject to moratorium to exploration and production. The bill, which will be marked up by the committee Wednesday and then sent to the House Budget Committee, would provide similar 125-mile buffer zone protection to other coastal states that object to drilling off of their shores, while giving coastal states that back drilling the ability to opt out of existing moratoriums.

It’s still unclear what parts or how much of the eastern Gulf would be open to drilling under Pombo’s measure. “We’re waiting to see those maps,” said Michael Kearns, spokesman for the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore energy companies. “It looks like they [Pombo and committee] have done quite a bit work with the Florida delegation,” and may have broken the long-standing “stalemate” between offshore drilling proponents and opponents. So “we are cautiously optimistic” at this stage, he noted.

Colleen M. Castille, secretary of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, negotiated the compromise with Pombo and committee staff, agreeing to the proposal after she became convinced the state’s strident opposition to drilling in the gas-rich eastern Gulf — namely Lease 181 — might not withstand the mounting support for offshore drilling in the aftermath of the twin hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast.

In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, “the country’s need for energy has created a momentum [for more drilling] the likes of which, I believe, our current protections cannot withstand,” she wrote Monday in a letter to Gov. Bush. Also working against Florida was the fact that a presidential ban against oil and gas drilling in areas of the eastern Gulf is set to expire in 2012, and the Interior Department is currently working on a five-year plan (2007-2012) that would permit leasing in areas not covered by the presidential ban, including Lease Sale 181, Castille said.

“While you [Bush] were successful in persuading the federal government to remove 75% of the [eastern Gulf] area from potential drilling in 2001, the area is likely to be opened” under Interior’s upcoming five-year program for leasing in the federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), she noted.

The Pombo bill offers Florida a number of substantial benefits, said Castille, who recommended that Bush accept it. “Florida will be able to prevent future oil and gas drilling near its shores in perpetuity. Perhaps more importantly, the bill provides a mechanism to remove the threat of drilling on 62 existing leases in the Gulf of Mexico within 100 miles of Florida’s shoreline, which were approved in the 1980s,” she said.

The Pombo measure would provide protection to 78 million acres of Florida’s coastline, according to Castille.

Specifically, it imposes a moratorium on all waters around Florida through 2012, and gives the state (governor and legislature) the authority to extend the ban past the 2012 expiration date; establishes new protections for water around the Florida Keys and the Atlantic Seaboard to Georgia’s border; places two million acres of Lease 181 that aren’t currently off-limits under moratorium, preventing exploration and drilling in areas commonly known as the “eastern bulge” and “stovepipe” — the offshore region closest to Alabama; repeals a provision in the energy policy act that requires the federal government to conduct an inventory of oil and gas reserves in all OCS areas, including those subject to moratoria; and places tracts important for military training in Lease 181 under moratoria.

The proposal has come under attack from environmentalists, House Democrats and Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), an ardent critic of energy drilling off the coast of Florida.

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