The Orlando Sentinel

WASHINGTON – Cries for more domestic energy supplies and the lure of billions in royalty payments from oil and gas companies sparked a critical vote Wednesday to open 2.4 million acres of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico to drilling.

Florida would be able to block drilling in most of the 125 miles closest to its shoreline. But areas beyond that could be open to drilling for the first time as part of a measure that passed 24-16 in the House Resources Committee.

For decades most of that area – as well as almost all of the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards – have been under congressional or presidential drilling bans. The vote Wednesday would allow states to decide whether to allow drilling within 125 miles of their shores. It also would open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

The offshore part of the legislation could bring drilling to states such as Virginia, Georgia and South Carolina for the first time. And it would give Mississippi and Alabama control over parts of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico where Florida politicians and environmentalists traditionally opposed drilling.

“Make no mistake, drilling for oil and gas off Florida’s fragile coastline is a risky scheme that jeopardizes our environment and our economy,” said Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla. “It won’t reduce the price at the pump and it won’t reduce our dependency on foreign oil.”

But after years of voting as a bloc against drilling, the Florida delegation has fractured this year. Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed the measure that passed Wednesday and has said spiraling oil and gas prices and hurricane-related disruptions in energy supplies have caused a growing national pressure for drilling.

Bush and some congressional Republicans from Florida have said the House Resources measure provides the state with a guaranteed 125-mile buffer. Because of that promise, they say, it’s smarter to back the current legislation than to simply hope that the wider drilling ban would be extended in a few years.

But environmentalists have urged Florida lawmakers to continue fighting to keep new leases out of the entire Eastern Gulf, saying spills can travel more than 125 miles and a future Congress could shrink the buffer.

“Once the oil industry has broken the precedent of no drilling rigs anywhere off the coast of Florida and they have built drilling infrastructure closer to our coast than ever before, the momentum to drill nearer and nearer to our shores may well be insurmountable,” said Mark Ferrulo of the environmental group Florida PIRG.

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., tried to strip the offshore-drilling provision out of the measure to salvage the congressional ban currently in place. But he failed on a 25-15 vote.

Pallone said he’s already seen how one state’s mess can affect another – recalling how New York trash and medical waste washed ashore in his state years ago. Leaving drilling decisions to states instead of Congress is dangerous, he said.

Republicans in Congress have put too much attention on “drill, drill, drill” instead of conservation and renewable energy, Pallone said. Opening the nation’s offshore areas to drilling “will do nothing for skyrocketing gasoline and natural gas prices,” he added.

But Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., said it will reduce American oil dependence on “thug-run countries” and unstable nations and will help provide more natural gas for U.S. manufacturing companies, which now pay much more than their international competitors for gas.

Flashes of anger surfaced at Florida politicians who have used their collective clout to stop new offshore drilling for years.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, even suggested that states that don’t allow drilling shouldn’t be able to buy the oil and gas that other states develop.

“We’re trying to help states keep from being hypocritical,” he said, noting anti-drilling states were “sucking up the country’s energy without contributing.”

The measure goes next to the House Budget Committee, where it will be added to a massive spending bill that includes spending cuts and tax cuts. From there it heads to the House Rules Committee and then the House floor.

One big bargaining position that likely will keep the measure from being derailed is the $832 million in revenue that it would bring to the federal treasury in the next five years alone.

States also would get up to 40 percent to 50 percent of the royalties from drilling near their shores.

If the bill clears the House, it would become one of the issues negotiated in final budget talks with the Senate later this year.

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(c) 2005, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

AP-NY-10-26-05 2011EDT