The Senate and House were at a standstill at the end of the week in their efforts to reach a compromise on legislation to open up more of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to oil and natural gas leasing, according to Capitol Hill aides.

“We are still working with the House and as of right now there have been no breakthroughs,” said Carolyn Weyforth, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), on Friday. Lawmakers have one week remaining to broker a deal before they leave to campaign for the November mid-term elections. Many admit that the prospects of a resolution are looking bleak at this point.

“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.

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 last Wednesday.

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 last 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 progressed to the leadership stage in the House and Senate, according to Weyforth and Denton.

Faced with a deadening silence from Capitol Hill on the fate of offshore legislation, a group of industrial energy consumers last week renewed its call for the Senate and House to quickly reconcile the differences in their two OCS leasing bills so that a legislative package can be approved before Congress leaves to campaign.

“We want this legislation to be dealt with before they leave in September. There is no good reason why concessions can’t be made and this legislation completed in September” before departing for the elections, said Paul N. Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA). “Congress has [a] historic opportunity to strengthen America’s energy, economic and national security. Time is running out. We strongly encourage you to get the job done.”

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