Pelosi softens stance on drilling

Says House will reconsider offshore oil ban

WASHINGTON - Dropping her opposition to a vote on coastal oil exploration, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that the House would consider expanded offshore drilling as part of broad energy legislation when Congress returns next month.

In the weekly Democratic radio address, Pelosi criticized Republicans as focusing too narrowly on offshore drilling as a solution to high gasoline prices, but said she would bow to demands that the House revisit a drilling ban that has been imposed annually since the 1980s.

She said legislation being assembled by Democrats "will consider opening portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling, with appropriate safeguards, and without taxpayer subsidies to big oil."

"We hope our Republican colleagues will join in a bipartisan effort, not only to increase domestic supply, but also to help consumers and to protect the environment," Pelosi said in the broadcast.

The decision came after growing anxiety among Democrats that Republicans were scoring politically with their call for a vote on offshore drilling. Though Congress is on its August break, a rotating group of House Republicans has rallied daily on the House floor, demanding that Pelosi call lawmakers back for a vote to allow oil companies to pursue offshore resources.

While Pelosi is relenting despite her longtime opposition to drilling off the coast of California, her home state, Republicans may not get the vote they wanted. Expanded coastal drilling would be just one element of a broader bill that would also contain provisions opposed by Republicans, including a requirement that utilities produce a certain amount of electricity through renewable fuels. Democrats could also impose rules denying Republicans a chance to offer changes to the measure.

Pelosi, who rarely delivers the radio address, said other elements of the Democratic measure would include requiring a release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to lower gas prices quickly and a proposal intended to cut down on speculation in energy futures.

Republicans quickly dismissed the Democratic approach.

"If Speaker Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues were truly serious about increasing production of American energy and lowering the price of gasoline, they would call Congress back into session immediately to vote on our 'all of the above' energy plan, rather than taking a five-week break away from Washington," said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader. He called the speaker's proposal "another flawed plan that will do little to lower gas prices."

Congress has banned new oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast for decades by restricting spending on leasing programs in the annual spending bill for the Interior Department, which oversees drilling on federal lands.