[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 91 (Wednesday, June 27, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Page S6983]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              OFFSHORE OIL

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I want to take a moment while 
the leadership of the Senate is, at this very moment, deciding which 
course the rest of the day will take with regard to this important 
legislation, the Patients' Bill of Rights. While we have a moment in 
which we might reflect on other items, I want to draw to the attention 
of the Senate the considerable concern of 16 million Floridians that 
the Bush administration is trying to drill for oil and gas off the 
shores of the State of Florida.
  It is most instructive, if one looks at a map of the Gulf of Mexico, 
where colored in on the gulf waters are the active drilling leases. One 
will see clearly that, from the central Gulf of Mexico all the way to 
the western Gulf of Mexico, almost all of the waters of the gulf are 
shaded in, indicating active oil and gas drilling leases. Indeed, there 
is a reason for that. It is because the reserves were there, the oil 
and gas deposits are there, the future reserves are expected to be 
there. As a matter of fact, I believe it is 80 percent of all 
economically recoverable, undiscovered gas reserves on the Outer 
Continental Shelf--which not only includes the gulf but also the 
Atlantic and Pacitic--80 percent of the Nation's known, recoverable gas 
reserves in the central and western gulf and 60 percent of the future 
recoverable oil reserves are in that area too. They are no in the area 
off the State of Florida.
  The State of Florida has consistently taken the position that we 
should not have oil and gas drilling because of the high cost and 
potential damage to our environment and to our economy. One of our 
primary industries is the tourism industry, which so often is dependent 
upon those pure, sugary white beaches being unspoiled so millions of 
visitors who come to Florida to enjoy the sunshine and the waters and 
the beaches can do so without having to worry about having oil spread 
across the beach.
  I can tell you that 16 million Floridians, in unison, do not want oil 
lapping up on our beaches. The cost to our environment and the cost to 
our economy would be simply too high.
  Why, you would ask, other than that the oil and gas reserves are in 
the central and western gulf, is there not any drilling off the coast 
of Florida? It goes back to the early 1980s, under the Reagan 
administration and a Secretary of the Interior, James Watt. He offered 
tracts for lease from as far north as Cape Hatteras, NC, in the 
Atlantic, south all the way as far as Fort Pierce, FL.
  I had the privilege of being a Member of the House of Representatives 
at the time. So I went to work, knowing the people of my congressional 
district, in the early 1980s, didn't want oil lapping up onto their 
beaches. We were able to persuade the appropriations subcommittee on 
the Department of the Interior appropriations bill to insert language 
that said no money appropriated under this act shall be used for 
offering for lease tracts such and such, and then listed the tracts all 
the way from North Carolina south to Fort Pierce, FL. And we prevailed 
in the appropriations.
  The administration left Floridians alone on offshore oil drilling for 
a couple of years but came back under a new Secretary of the Interior 
and tried again. This time it was harder to stop. This time it 
escalated all the way to the full House Appropriations Committee. But 
we finally prevailed, interestingly, not on the threat to the economy 
or to the environment of Florida, and indeed the United States 
eastern coastline, but prevailed by getting NASA and the Defense 
Department to own up to the fact that you cannot have oil rigs down 
there in the footprint of where you are dropping solid rocket boosters 
off the space shuttle and where you are dropping first stages off the 
expendable booster rockets that are being launched out of the Cape 
Canaveral Air Force station. And we have not been bothered since the 
early 1980s, in Florida, about offshore oil drilling--until now.

  The bush administration is pressing a 6-million-acre lease off the 
northwest coast of Florida in a strange configuration called lease-sale 
181, of which the bulk of the 6 million acres is 100 miles offshore but 
a stovepipe runs northward to within about 20 miles of the Alabama 
coastline, which is about 20 miles, then, from the white sands of 
Perdido Key, State of Florida.
  In a meeting of the Vice President with a Florida congressional 
members delegation, the Vice President suggested a compromise, which 
was to knock off that stovepipe coming off the bulk of the 6 million 
acres. That is no compromise. That is unacceptable because that is 
still oil drilling off the State of Florida where the future reserves 
are shown to be not as abundant. The tradeoff to 16 million Floridians 
is simply not worth what potentially could be discovered in oil and 
gas--the despoiling of our environment and the killing of our economy.
  Thus, it was such welcome news when we learned last week that the 
other side of the Capitol, the House of Representatives, added to the 
Interior appropriations bill an amendment that would prohibit such 
drilling. The vehicle was the Interior appropriations bill. It 
prohibits it for only 6 months. It will be my intention, and certainly 
the intention of my wonderful colleague, the distinguished senior 
Senator from the State of Florida, Mr. Graham, that we in the future 
will offer amendments either to the Interior appropriations bill, to 
bring it in conformity with the House-passed bill, or more likely 
amendments that would cause a prohibition of lease-sale 181 as well as 
offering similar amendments to the authorizing bill that will come out 
of Chairman Bingaman's committee.
  I want our colleagues to be clear. This is an issue of enormous 
magnitude to 16 million Floridians. It happens to be of enormous 
magnitude to New Jersey, the State of the Senator who sits as Presiding 
Officer, as well as all the States in New England which value so much 
the pristine waters and the waters particularly as you get on north of 
New Hampshire and Maine--those waters that produce such delicacies as 
the Maine lobsters. This is a matter of grave concern to many of us.
  It is time to draw the line in the sand--hopefully, not a line that 
will be washed over by oil on our beaches' sands but, rather, a line 
that will indicate the unanimity of 16 million Floridians, joined by 
their sister States along the eastern seaboard, of opposition to 
offshore oil drilling.

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