New York Times
 

Editorial - July 15, 2008


President Bush's decision on Monday to lift the moratorium on offshore oil drilling first imposed by his father 18 years ago is designed to ratchet up the pressure on Congress to do likewise. Congress should resist. Offshore drilling will not bring short-term relief from $4-a-gallon gasoline, nor can it play much more than a marginal role in any long-term strategy for energy independence. The oil companies already have access to substantial unexplored resources.

At issue are about 19 billion barrels that, the Interior Department says, lie in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Until Monday, these waters had been protected by two parallel moratoriums.

One was an executive prohibition on offshore drilling in the Lower 48 states, imposed by the first President Bush in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez disaster. This moratorium was later extended by President Bill Clinton, who added protections for Alaska's Bristol Bay, a rich fishing ground. Mr. Bush lifted the Bristol Bay protections last year and has now eliminated the rest.

Nothing can happen in these waters, however, unless Congress chooses not to extend its moratorium, first enacted in 1981. Under law, the moratorium must be renewed every year in the annual spending bill for the Interior Department. That bill is still in the committee stage in both houses of Congress. And while the environmental community (and anti-drilling governors like Arnold Schwarzenegger) are confident that a Democratic-controlled Congress will renew the prohibitions, nothing is certain in this new era of $4-a-gallon gasoline.

Congress should not give into the pressures of a restless public and a campaign by sacrificing long-term environmental protections for short-term political gain.