The Senate on Tuesday drove back an attempt by coastal state senators to purge a provision from the omnibus energy bill (HR 6) that directs the federal government to carry out an inventory of the oil and natural gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

By 52 to 44, pro-drilling forces in the Senate defeated an amendment, offered by Sens. Mel Martinez (R-FL) and Bill Nelson (D-FL), to strike language from the energy bill to conduct a seismic survey inventory of oil and gas resources in all OCS areas, including those in coastal areas where drilling has been banned by Congress for the past 24 years. The victory for supporters of cataloguing offshore resources came a week after they lost out in a Senate battle on their larger goal of relaxing the drilling ban.

It was a major win for the energy industry and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), who added the OCS inventory provision during mark-up of the energy bill by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in late May. She had the backing of Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), chairman of the Senate energy panel, and Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the committee. Both Domenici and Bingaman are the floor managers of the energy measure, which is now in its second week of debate in the Senate. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) said the Senate is expected to finish the bill by Thursday or Friday.

The vote was a key setback for environmentalists and senators from coastal states, who contend the inventory study is an attempt to undermine the congressional moratorium on drilling off Florida, and the West and East Coasts. Martinez and Nelson signaled, however, that their fight is not over yet. They said they will now try to reach a compromise with Congress that would allow Florida to opt out of the inventory.

A week ago Florida’s senators had successfully brokered an agreement in which Domenici and Bingaman pledged to oppose all efforts to relax the moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the OCS or open up Lease 181 in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The Florida senators had threatened to filibuster and prevent a vote on the entire bill if they did not get coastal protections. The provision on inventorying of OCS oil and gas resources was not part of the deal (see Daily GPI, June 16).

The Senate approved a similar provision calling for an OCS inventory in the 108th Congress, but it eventually wound up on the cutting-room floor during the House-Senate conference on the broad energy bill. The OCS inventory language could face a similar fate this year.

“This is not a drilling amendment. This is a security amendment,” and a “good stewardship amendment,” argued Landrieu in favor of keeping her provision in the energy bill. The American public has a right to know “what [oil and gas] resources are there for them if they should need them,” she said.

“Nothing is going to happen to the [coastal] states,” or the congressional moratorium if an OCS inventory is conducted, Domenici said. “We ought to know what’s there. Some decision [about drilling] can be made in the future.”

Sen. Nelson, a major opponent of drilling off the coast of Florida, countered that the federal government already knows “what’s out there” in terms of oil and natural gas. Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) conducts updates every year, he said, adding that the next one is due out this summer.

An OCS inventory is the “first step to drill. It’s the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. Once the camel’s nose is under the tent, it’s going to collapse and there is going to be drilling all along the continental shelf,” Nelson argued. Martinez agreed that an inventory was a “precursor” to overturning the moratorium on drilling.

“We believe inventorying is a step on a slippery slope” toward lifting the ban on drilling on much of the OCS, echoed Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ).

In other developments, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is expected to offer an amendment Wednesday morning seeking to enhance states’ authority over liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, a spokesman said (see related story).

Frist promised a Senate energy bill by the end of the week. “It’s been too long in the making…And we will deliver [it] to the American people,” he said following a meeting with President Bush Tuesday.

©Copyright 2005Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.