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Posted on 06/11/2002 10:00:53 PM PDT by kattracks
You've got to love Californians. When Bill Clinton was president, folks happily agreed that Clinton should pass goodies onto the Golden State because they helped him win the White House. Friends help friends. But when President Bush helps his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, by having Uncle Sam buy up Florida's federal offshore-oil leases, Gov. Gray Davis is indignant that President Bush won't do the same for California. Davis tried to pin California's electricity crisis on Bush, and Bush is supposed to respond by helping Davis out. Ha!
A California deal could drain $2 billion -- as opposed to Florida's $235 million -- from federal coffers. Bush is supposed to figure that money is no object if it can keep California coastlines chichi? Anything to let Californians be assured that new domestic drilling will be limited to tacky places where men drive pickups with rifle racks and chew tobacco.
Davis was incensed last week when Interior Secretary Gale Norton told him Dubya won't bail out California because "Florida opposes coastal drilling, and California does not." His Grayness countered that Californians "vehemently" oppose new offshore drilling.
"Vehemently" is accurate to the extent that you can vehemently oppose drilling while driving alone in an SUV with an enviro bumper sticker.
Actually, Norton was referring to the fact that, unlike California, Florida never issued state offshore leases. In a neat bit of jujitsu, Norton noted that 150 new California-lease wells were drilled since 1990, but there were only 114 new federal wells. Norton spokesman Mark Pfeifle crowed that as a State Lands Commissioner, lieutenant governor and top guy, "Mr. Davis has since the early '90s participated in more drilling than Jed Clampett."
In Davis' defense, spokesman Roger Salazar noted, Davis had to operate under decades-old leases. And: Private companies "have a right to drill on their lease. Otherwise you'd have to compensate them for it."
All true. Thing is, Salazar's arguments also work for Bush. America is supposed to honor property rights. It's not legal to renege on a lease; so it's expensive if you want out.
Joining the circus, Davis' GOP challenger, Bill Simon, says he would ban new offshore drilling. Simon even hit Davis for approving drilling. (Simon spokesman Jeff Flint explained: "Gray Davis can't have it both ways. He can't portray himself as the defender of the coast at the same time he is taking (money) from oil companies and expanding drilling off the coast.")
Simon has obviously figured out what voters want to hear: Drilling bad.
And don't want to hear: That California is the "do as we say not as we do" state. According to the state Energy Commission, California consumes twice as much gasoline as it produces.
Salazar mused that if Gray's last name were Bush, there would be a different ending. Yet Salazar well knows -- he worked on the Al Gore presidential campaign -- the Clinton administration could have stepped in, checkbook in hand, but didn't.
So why should Bush pony up? Said Stanley Young of the State Resources Agency, "The coast of California generates a great deal of revenue, and a great deal of the California economy is dependent on the health of its coastal resources."
Good grief, the worst that happens is that U.S. taxpayers save $2 bil and oil companies exercise a mere 36 leases off California's mid-coast. That doesn't mean wall-to-wall oil derricks lining beaches from Chula Vista to Crescent City. It means a few industrial jewels glittering in the seascape. Cruise some night down a sweet stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway and you'll see them, twinkling like happy stars.
Contact Debra Saunders | Read her biography
©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Pardon me if I issue some plain old facts into the argument.
The State of California has made a $hitload of money from offshore oil and gas. Indeed, much of the University of California and California State University systems were built up in the 1950's and 1960's on the plentiful petroleum revenue coming to the State. Some of California's offshore oil and gas leases have been in existence since the late 1920's and early 1930's. The Davis people commit "lies of omission" when the claim otherwise (the rationale is that the leases were "renewed" under a new name, so they aren't really that old - WRONG!!).
There are oil and gas leases in the California Tidelands and Submerged lands, ranging from Point Conception at the west end of the Santa Barbara Channel, to offshore Orange County - included granted lands in the Santa Monica Bay!
The first Federal leases were issued in 1963 off of NORTHERN and CENTRAL California. Some of the wells drilled on these leases discovered oil, but not in sufficient quality or quantity to justify development at 1960's prices. It was only after California lost a major US Suprme court case concerning jurisdiction in the Santa Barbara Channel, to the Federal Government in 1965, that they began to sour on offshore oil and gas. Then the (highly overrated) drilling accident off of Santa Barbara galvanized local environmental resistance. Then politics, rather than good policy, stuck its ugly nose in the game, and it hasn't been the same since.
The State of Florida did issue offshore oil and gas leases in the 1950's and 1960's. There were very few, and nothing of substance was ever developed from them. In California, almost 2 billions barrels have come from California waters, and almost 1 billion barrels from Federal waters there. The Federal waters still have significant proven reserves, and significant unexplored potential. For a State with a near 20 billion dollar budget shortfall, a crumbling infrastructure, declining schools, and a State that suffered from severe energy shortages last summer, Gov. Davis sure has a lousy energy policy. But, he hopes, it will buy him the "green vote" and that's all he really cares about anyway.
Your narrative explains a number of things formerly mysterious to me (I'm just a crummy ol' trader, my dollars only grease the mkts with liquidity).
Many thanks, and best wishes to you.
calgov2002:
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I think this is why Democratic Senators like Losserman, Chuckie Schumer, Hillary, Boxer, Feinstein, Murray, and Cant-vote-well are all so despirate about finding an issue for this fall's elections. They know that if the Dems don't control the House and don't control the Senate, their life will not be pleasant. They got a taste of things until they bribed one RINO sentator.
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