[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1325-1326]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              OIL DRILLING

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I wanted to call to the 
attention of the Senate that over the past couple of days the question 
of drilling for oil off the coast of Florida has been joined. Indeed, 
the question and the debate has accelerated.
  Yesterday, the Department of the Interior offered their proposed new 
alignment of the Gulf of Mexico and the central planning area where 
drilling for oil will occur and the eastern planning area where oil 
drilling will not occur.
  As we have speculated for some period of time, when the Department of 
the Interior published in the Federal Register that State boundaries 
were going to be redrawn so that the boundaries of the State of 
Louisiana, indeed, went into the waters off of the State of Florida, we 
could well speculate, with some justification, that indeed that was 
going to be the plan. That, in fact, was the plan offered yesterday by 
the Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, for the next 5 years in the 
Outer Continental Shelf.
  The Secretary's plan increases the drilling in the eastern Gulf of 
Mexico off the State of Florida by 2 million acres. That was 
simultaneously followed by the filing of a bill by the chairman of the 
Energy Committee, the Senator from New Mexico, which would encompass 
almost the entirety of an area not included in the moratorium on the 
Outer Continental Shelf, known as lease sale 181.
  The essence of the proposal by the Senator from New Mexico is to 
drill for oil and gas in an area of 4 million acres, in a bulge which 
bulges out from the imaginary Florida-Alabama line into the waters off 
the State of Florida.
  This senior Senator from Florida, joined by my colleague, Senator 
Martinez, recognizing this was coming, laid out a plan last week--a 
plan that would allow some drilling in a part of lease sale 181 but far 
from the Florida coast--indeed, 260 miles west of Tampa Bay and 
Clearwater Beach, that from Pensacola, FL, in the panhandle, would be 
150 miles to the south but then would honor the so-called ``military 
mission line,'' about which Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld stated in 
a letter before Christmas that oil and gas drilling in that area, which 
has been restricted space because we train and test our military 
weapons, would not be compatible; to use his words: It would be 
incompatible with military objectives, with military preparedness 
through our training and testing in the waters, off the waters, and 
around the waters of the Gulf of Mexico off Florida.
  Therefore, Senator Martinez and I proposed a line that would honor 
the request of the Department of Defense. That request was corroborated 
the day before yesterday in front of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee, when this Senator put the question to Secretary Rumsfeld, 
again in the form of thanking him for his clear statement, and he 
acknowledged that statement again.
  Where does this leave us? We must continue to have this fight.
  We have the prodrilling forces, as evidenced by Senator Domenici and 
his proposal wanting additional drilling off the coast of Florida. We 
have a more modest proposal by the Secretary of the Interior, who 
consulted with a couple of dozen oil companies and their proposal, and 
we have the proposal of the two Senators from Florida, recognizing 
there is much at stake beyond drilling.
  The stakes are very high, not even to speak of Florida's economy, 
which is certainly evidenced by a $50 billion a year tourism industry 
which depends on pristine beaches, without oilspills the likes of which 
occurred last week in Alaska.
  When people say: Oh, it is gas that we want to drill, not oil, 
ignoring the fact that one of the largest and most costly oil spills 
occurred when a gas rig blew off the coast of California in 1968, 
causing this massive oilspill, which led to the enactment of a 
moratorium of all drilling off the Continental Shelf of the United 
States.
  Certainly, economic interests of our State are clearly one component. 
But there is another component; that is, we have bays and estuaries 
where so much of our marine life is spawned where the delicate 
environment would be savaged with an oilspill.
  People said it would be far from Florida shores, but winds and 
currents do not understand mileage. Indeed, there is that current that 
comes up into the Gulf of Mexico in a northward arc off of the Yucatan 
Peninsula of Mexico and then turns southward and comes around the 
Florida Keys, then northward it is the current known as the Gulf 
Stream.
  The idea that long distances are going to protect the delicate 
environment, I hope that can be recognized as a false argument.
  Another component of the argument is simply that there is very little 
oil out there. They have had several dry holes. The geology shows there 
is not very much oil. The oil, in fact, in the Gulf of Mexico, is where 
the 4,000-plus oil rigs are, which is the central gulf and the western 
gulf off of, primarily, Louisiana and Texas.
  But then, of course, there is the fourth component of why we should 
not drill in the eastern gulf. That is our military preparedness. If 
you fly commercially from Tampa to New Orleans, you do not fly across 
the gulf. You hug the coast of Florida. Why? It is restricted space. It 
is the largest testing and training area for our U.S. military. It is 
what Secretary Rumsfeld memorialized in the letter to the Senate 
Committee on Armed Services in December

[[Page 1326]]

saying: Do not drill east of that military mission line.
  We are testing weapons systems such as the F/A-22. All pilot training 
is being done at Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City. Why? Because 
the Gulf of Mexico is restricted space. In a dog fight with the F/A-22, 
compared to the F-15, the F/A-22 is engaging in air-to-air combat at a 
speed of 1.5 mach, not like the F-15 and the F-16 at .75 mach, three-
quarters of the speed of sound. In other words, the new stealth fighter 
is engaging in air-to-air combat at twice the speed of our present 
fleet of aircraft. Therefore, the training area has to be so much 
larger.
  We are testing right now a laser weapon shot from a ship, which goes 
several hundred miles. We have to have restricted space. Secretary of 
Defense Rumsfeld said oil and gas rigs are incompatible with the 
military uses of that space.
  That is four components. Senator Martinez and I took all those 
components into consideration in suggesting our plan. And we added a 
20-mile cushion since that military mission line that Secretary 
Rumsfeld referred to was established in 1981, and the weapons have 
gotten more sophisticated and, as I stated, require much more space in 
which to test and to train our military.
  That is the line we have drawn which is in effect from Clearwater 
Beach, right there at Tampa Bay, St. Petersburg Beach, 260 miles to the 
west from a position further south of Florida, like Fort Myers or 
Naples. It is in excess of 300 miles from the coast of Florida.
  To my knowledge, as of today every newspaper editorial page in the 
State of Florida, save for one newspaper, has editorialized in favor of 
Senator Martinez and my proposal from last week. I don't have the exact 
count, but that is something upwards of 20 editorial pages.
  As we come here for the fights that are going to occur, Senator 
Martinez and I are looking for a practical line that will accommodate 
the interests of everyone, including our military preparedness. That is 
why we cannot have a bill that was offered in the House of 
Representatives last fall that says leave it up to the States. We can't 
leave it up to a State to set military policy. We cannot leave it up to 
an individual State legislature to determine whether the U.S. military 
is going to be prepared in this long war on terror. That is why Senator 
Martinez and I have said these boundaries ought to be permanent, not in 
some 5-year plan that is now being offered but permanent.
  We are going to continue the fight. I can tell the Senate there is no 
daylight between Senator Martinez, who sits on that side of the aisle, 
and this senior Senator of Florida, who sits on this side of the aisle. 
We will employ every opportunity we have under the rules of the Senate 
to try to get others who disagree to understand the practicality and 
the wisdom of the proposal we have laid out to accommodate all of the 
interests, including the military interests of this country.
  I share that with the Senate. This is not going to be the last time 
we will discuss that, but I make this Senator's position unalterably 
clear. I thank the Senate for this opportunity to share these thoughts.
  I yield the floor.

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