In an attempt to prevent future oil spill disasters in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Tuesday said she has introduced legislation that would cut off the flow of federal incentives for oil and natural gas drilling in the deep waters of the Outer Continental Shelf.

The bill would repeal mandatory and discretionary royalty-based incentives for all future leases to drill for oil and gas in federal waters at depths of 400 meters (1,312 feet) or more.

“The BP spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico proves that offshore drilling in deep waters is extremely risky and that safety, prevention and response technologies are totally insufficient. Yet energy companies have long benefited from federal incentives that encourage drilling at increasingly greater and greater depths. This to me makes no sense,” Feinstein said.

Oil has been spewing in the GOM for more than two months following an explosion on board the BP plc-leased Deepwater Horizon, which sank off the coast of Louisiana.

She said the taxpayer-funded incentives should instead go towards the development of clean, renewable energy sources.

Congress over the past decades has established a number of royalty relief programs to promote domestic exploration and production in deep waters. In 1995 Congress passed the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, which granted a royalty “holiday” to oil and gas companies drilling in deep waters for leases sold between 1996 and 2000. The measure reduced the amount of royalties that companies owed for drilling in the GOM.

And in 2005 Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which mandated royalty relief for wells in waters deeper than 400 meters. This provided incentives for drilling for oil and natural gas in the offshore U.S. deepest waters.

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