It’s No Time to Rush

Even the zealots at the Department of the Interior who want to drill every acre of ocean floor in the Pacific had decided that it would be a good idea to keep the offshore oil issue quiet for the rest of this election year. But the oil boys were not content with that, and they apparently have got their buddies in the Senate to send Southern California a bolt from the blue--or out of the deep.

The Interior Department earlier acceded to the concerns of Vice President George Bush and postponed action on proposed lease sale No. 91 covering federally controlled waters off the coast of Mendocino and Humboldt counties in far Northern California. The House has included language in the Interior appropriations bill to bar the leasing until Oct. 1, 1989. Everyone thought that was that for California and offshore oil until the next Administration.

But on Monday the Interior subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to accelerate the next lease sale for waters off the Southern California coast to July, 1989. Lease sale No. 95 had not been scheduled until January, 1990.

This was a shocker. Not even the Interior Department favors such early consideration of the Southern California sale. But subcommittee chairman J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) claimed that the auction to allow the oil companies to prospect the Pacific from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border had to be held sooner because the proceeds from the sale were needed to bolster the fiscal 1990 budget. The sale is expected to bring in about $235 million. Opponents claimed that this argument was a sham. Most likely the oil forces wanted a card to trade off against the Northern California lease delay when the issue finally is resolved in a Senate-House conference committee.

The Senate should reject the subcommittee’s position. If it fails to do that, the House must insist in the conference committee that the Southern California sale be set back to 1990. At the moment, the California coast probably is the most environmentally sensitive region proposed for leasing. It certainly is the most controversial. All California leasing decisions should be delayed until the new Administration has had time to develop a comprehensive energy policy and to study in detail the considerable consequences of any further drilling in the many environmentally sensitive areas along the California coast.