Republicans scored a key procedural victory Wednesday when the Senate overwhelmingly voted to move ahead with debate on legislation to open up millions of acres in the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and natural gas leasing.

By 86 to 12, the Senate invoked cloture to proceed with debate on S. 3711, which would make 8.3 million acres in the Lease Sale 181 area in the eastern Gulf and in a tract south of Lease Sale 181 available to oil and natural gas producers, provide protections from drilling for Florida until 2022 and give four Gulf coastal states a bigger share of the federal royalties from drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to restore their receding wetlands and other coastal areas. The new leasing is expected to result in production of approximately 1.26 billion barrels of oil and 6 Tcf of natural gas.

The cloture vote should not be read as a barometer of support for the mostly Republican-crafted bill because even those senators who oppose the measure voted to proceed with debate, which will take up the rest of the week. A vote on whether to pass the measure is expected to occur next week, before the Senate leaves for its month-long August recess.

Ten of the 12 senators who voted against bringing S. 3711 to the floor for debate were from western and eastern coastal states that believe drilling in a small footprint of Lease Sale 181 could foreshadow widespread activity off their shorelines. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine was the only Republican to vote against cloture.

Republican leaders made clear that no amendments would be offered to the bill, despite Democrat assurances that they would limit the number of amendments and the debate time. The “only way to achieve success…is to keep it very, very narrowly crafted and pass as is” out of the Senate, said Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, clearly was taken aback by Republican attempts to “frustrate” amendments.

Although he considered the bill to be “seriously flawed” in its current form, Bingaman said he intended to vote for cloture so that amendments could be offered during debate to improve the measure. “In this Congress, we made great progress on energy because we adopted an open, an inclusive and bipartisan approach on the issues. And that record, in my view, is at risk if we adopt a process on this bill that is a closed process. I hope the Senate consideration of this bill will be in the vein of the consideration that we gave to the last energy bill,” he noted.

In critiquing S. 3711, Bingaman argued that it locks up vast portions of Gulf oil and gas resources for 16 years in exchange for near-term leasing in the Lease Sale 181 area, and it cedes billions of dollars of royalties that would otherwise go to the U.S. Treasury to four Gulf states. He said the bill relinquishes access to 21 Tcf of natural gas until 2022 to gain access to 6 Tcf in Lease Sale 181, and would prohibit drilling in the Florida Straits near Cuba. The measure also would result in a “large diversion” of oil and gas royalties, which are the third largest source of revenues for the federal government, to four Gulf coastal states — a move that Bingaman believes violates federal law that places ownership of the OCS in the hands of the entire nation, not just certain states.

S. 3711 is “bad energy policy for the country,” and “bad fiscal policy” that could “come back to haunt us,” Bingaman said.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) urged Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) to “change his mind” about no floor amendments. “I think the Senate can do better on a bipartisan basis,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense for the United States Senate to say, ‘Let’s drill a bit in the Gulf and let’s call it a day.'”

Democrats hoped to propose amendments that would offer states along the East and West Coasts the same protections — a moratorium on drilling off their shores until 2022 — that Florida has received in S. 3711; would call on the House to accept the narrower Lease Sale 181 bill in lieu of the lower chamber’s more expansive measure that would give coastal states complete control over whether to allow leasing within 100 miles of their shorelines, and would remove the ban on drilling beyond the 100-mile mark (HR 4761); would clean up the federal government’s royalty program; and would increase the production of alternative energy fuels.

To the East and West Coast senators who demand the same coastal protections as Florida, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) countered, “This is a focused piece of legislation that deals only with the Gulf of Mexico.”

Efforts to reconcile the House and Senate offshore leasing bill are likely to be difficult. Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), chairman of the House Resources Committee and one of the architects of the House OCS bill, said Tuesday the House was not willing to accept the Senate’s more limited Lease Sale 181 bill in place of its more comprehensive OCS measure. Meanwhile, Frist said the Senate would oppose any efforts in conference to expand the scope of its bill.

“This small lease sale is one of the most important issues spoken of in this [chamber] this year,” said Sen. Pete Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and sponsor of S. 3711, prior to the cloture vote Wednesday. The bill would require the Lease Sale 181 area to be opened to leasing within one year of enactment of the measure.

The Bush administration and some senators, such as Bingaman, have expressed concern about the cost of the revenue sharing provisions in the bill. But Domenici countered that the costs associated with the sharing of federal royalty receipts with the Gulf Coast states are far outweighed by inaction.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that bonuses, rents and royalties from new leasing authorized under S. 3711 would be $1.5 billion between 2008 and 2016, with 50% of that allocated to the four Gulf coastal states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama) and to activities authorized by the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) said Louisiana and the other Gulf coastal states cannot continue as the energy workhorse for the nation without receiving a “very reasonable portion” of the federal royalties from offshore production to help restore the receding coastlines. Landrieu is one of the only Democrats to co-sponsor the bill. “We must have coastal restoration” in the bill, agreed Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. “This legislation gives New Orleans, LA hope” to rebuild after last year’s hurricanes.

“We’re not greedy but we want our fair share” of the royalties from OCS production, said Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), whose state would benefit under S. 3711 by receiving a portion of the federal royalties.

The legislation also provides a “zone of protection for the state of Florida” from drilling that extends 200-300 miles west of Tampa and 125 miles south of the Florida Panhandle until 2022, said Martinez, a co-sponsor of the bill. “It’s the best deal on the table” for Florida. “It cannot be any way but this way if it is to have the support of [the] Florida senators,” he noted.

Martinez, who has come under sharp attack from environmentalists for supporting S. 3711, said he “chose to be part of [the] solution for Florida,” recognizing that the Sunshine State — “one of the nation’s largest consumers” of energy — could no longer stand on the sidelines.

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