Oil drilling proposed for off-limit areas

WASHINGTON – The Interior Department will announce a proposal Monday to allow oil and gas drilling in federal waters near Virginia that are currently off-limits and to permit new exploration in Alaska’s Bristol Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, according to people who have seen or been told about drafts of the plan.

The department issued a news release Friday that was lacking details but said that it had finished a five-year plan that will include a “major proposal for expanded oil and natural gas development on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.” Department officials declined to describe the plan.

Congress would still have to agree to open areas currently off-limits before any drilling could take place off Virginia’s coast. Every year since 1982, after an oil spill off Santa Barbara, Calif., Congress has reaffirmed a moratorium on drilling off the nation’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Last year, after a vigorous push by drilling advocates, Congress opened new waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Interior Department might still go ahead with environmental and geological seismic studies off Virginia, but the plan does not envision drilling there before 2011, according to a congressional source who saw an earlier version of the proposal.

Environmental groups said Friday that they were troubled by the idea of oil exploration and drilling so near the wildlife refuge on Assateague Island and in an area closely linked to the Chesapeake Bay. Some of the bay’s best-known species, such as blue crabs and rockfish, migrate to the ocean.

Activists said that simply looking for oil and gas could cause environmental harm if waste products used to lubricate or cool drill bits are cast overboard. Such materials are often toxic and could threaten marine life in the area, said Richard Charter of Defenders of Wildlife.

Many drilling advocates say that the oil industry has had a good environmental record in the Gulf of Mexico and that the nation needs to develop domestic oil and gas reserves to bring down prices and reduce reliance on foreign oil.

One place that doesn’t need approval from Congress is the area north of the Alaska Peninsula near the Aleutian Islands, known as Bristol Bay. Home to one of the world’s largest salmon runs, according to the Sierra Club, Bristol Bay was not covered by the same ban on drilling.

President Bush used his executive power to lift the ban in January. Congress has 60 days to reimpose it, or else drilling preparations could start in Bristol Bay as soon as July 1.

Athan Manuel, offshore drilling expert at the Sierra Club, said, “We need to do more to drill in Detroit by finding more oil efficiency in our cars and trucks rather than drilling off of some of our most sensitive coasts that are important environmentally, but also economically, in driving billion-dollar fishing and tourist industries.”