Bush lifts offshore drilling ban, urges action

Move will take effect only if Congress backs it

President Bush announced his decision to lift an executive order banning offshore drilling on the outer continental shelf from the Rose Garden of the White House yesterday. (saul loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - President Bush lifted nearly two decades of executive orders banning drilling for oil and natural gas off the country's shoreline yesterday while challenging Congress to open up more areas for exploration to address soaring energy prices.

Democrats in Congress, joined by environmentalists, criticized the step and ridiculed it as ineffectual, while most Republicans and industry representatives applauded it as long overdue.

The lifting of the moratorium - first announced by Bush's father, President George Bush, in 1990 and extended by President Bill Clinton - will have no real impact, because a congressional moratorium on drilling enacted in 1982 and renewed annually remains in force. And there appeared to be no consensus for lifting it in tandem with Bush's action.

Rather than signaling a change in the country's policy, the president's decision appeared only to harden well-established positions, intensifying an already contentious issue in the middle of an election year.

Bush's critics reacted furiously, restating support for alternative legislative proposals, including releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, the speaker of the House, derided "the oilman in the White House" and said the plan would not address the immediate spike in energy prices. "The Bush plan is a hoax," Pelosi said in a statement. "It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence."

The two presidential campaigns mirror the sharp differences. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, had previously expressed support for opening the continental shelf for exploration and production. The campaign of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic nominee, responded that Americans needed to concentrate on conservation and alternative sources of energy, not simply open new oil fields.

Since 1982, the ban on offshore oil and gas leases on the outer continental shelf has been renewed by Republican and Democratic presidents and Democratic and Republican Congresses. But the price of oil has quickly changed the political contours of the debate.

Democrats accused the White House of exploiting the issue for political purposes and said the administration could take steps to accelerate exploration of tracts already available to oil companies if it was serious about increasing domestic production.

Still, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader, faces an increasing uneasiness among his colleagues, who have signaled receptiveness to allowing more drilling.

A bipartisan group of senators is trying to develop a compromise energy plan, and the leaders of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee have scheduled a workshop for Thursday where lawmakers and other experts will offer ideas on how to respond to the climb in oil prices.