The Senate leadership hopes to reach a compromise with the House by the end of the week on legislation to open up more of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to oil and natural gas leasing, but the goal could prove to be elusive.

“We are still working with the House to come to some sort of compromise to have some sort of legislation in front of the president” by the end of week, said Carolyn Weyforth, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). “That is our goal and that is our hope,” she noted.

“Everybody’s realistic that the window’s closing quickly” on getting an agreement that is acceptable to both the Senate and House, which have passed vastly different bills to open up more of the OCS to exploration and production, said Wesley Denton, a spokesman for Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). “If we are going to reach a result, it has to be done very rapidly,” he told NGI.

House and Senate lawmakers are planning to leave at the end of next week to campaign for the November mid-term elections. The OCS legislation is “something we’d like to get done” before Congress departs, Denton said.

But House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) said the ticking clock wasn’t the House’s chief concern. “We are more concerned about getting a great bill with the Senate as opposed to what day on the calendar it comes up,” he said Wednesday.

Asked if the Senate Republican goal was realistic, one Democratic aide replied with two words — “not very.”

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). But House leaders have resisted this 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.

“What we are trying to do is see if the House might be willing to take the Senate bill if we can take some House provisions and get them passed some other way here in the Senate,” DeMint said in a story published in E&E Daily Wednesday. That’s “one way we’re discussing to get it done,” Denton noted.

DeMint “believes strongly in the issue,” and is using his contacts in the House to help broker a deal, Denton said. DeMint was elected to the Senate in November 2004 after serving six years in the House.

The negotiations, which have been ongoing for several weeks, initially included House and Senate Republican staff members. But given the pressing nature of the offshore legislation, the talks now have now reached the leadership stage in the House and Senate, according to Weyforth and Denton.

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