The record shows that Florida got a big payback less than two
years after that state’s year-2000 electoral shenanigans assured
that George W. Bush would become the first president since
Rutherford B. Hays to take the White House without at least a
plurality of the vote.
The record shows that Florida got a big payback less than two years after that state’s year-2000 electoral shenanigans assured that George W. Bush would become the first president since Rutherford B. Hays to take the White House without at least a plurality of the vote.
The federal Minerals Management Service, a wing of the Interior department and directly under Bush’s control, bought back dozens of oil leases in the offshore waters of the Gulf of Mexico from oil companies, assuring there will be no oil spills sullying the beaches of towns from Naples to Pensacola in the foreseeable future.
It didn’t hurt Florida that Bush’s brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, pushed his brother to buy back the leases rather than extending them.
Fast forward to the other day in Washington, D.C., when the same Minerals Management Service announced it sees “no significant impact” on the environment from extending oil leases off the California coast rather than buying them back.
The open question: if there was enough potential impact on the environment of Florida to buy back those oil leases, why is there none in California? The answer may be that California voted Democratic in the last two elections and ever since, has consistently gotten the short straw from the Bush administration.
This has extended from Bush’s refusal to exempt California from requirements to include expensive ethanol in its gasoline to a steady refusal of federal funds to cover even part of the cost for imprisoning thousands of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes after they arrive here.
While it’s plain that California has second-class status in the eyes of the Bush administration, there is some consolation in the fact that this state has at times asserted its right to control its own coastline and Bush has not gone to the mat over it.
Disagreements between this state and Bush appointees abounded while Democrat Gray Davis was still governor; Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has yet to challenge a single federal decision, from the level and distribution of refunds for electricity overcharges during the energy crunch of 200-2001 to distribution of funds for Medi-Cal. Whatever Bush doles out, Schwarzenegger accepts without question.
But under Davis, the state Coastal Commission asserted a right to review every offshore lease extension request from an oil company to make sure of compliance with state law. When Bush appointees balked at conceding this, environmental groups joined Davis in two lawsuits, winning both. Bush’s lawyers declined to take either case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
This leaves the Coastal Commission veto power over any potential use of existing oil leases, which now cover 36 undrilled spots from Oxnard to San Luis Obispo. Another 43 leased tracts in federal waters are now in active drilling.
But all those were leased or developed before Congress during Ronald Reagan’s presidency adopted a moratorium on new offshore drilling.
Yet, coastal residents and beachgoers occasionally worry that new oil rigs could appear on horizons off popular strands, simply because the leases are there. Their fears received some new credibility when Minerals Management last year objected to a proposed expansion of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Such an expansion, the service said, could affect “future oil and gas resource recovery.”
You bet it could, but only if federal officials still hope to expand oil production from offshore California wells, as some energy companies are now pressing them to do.
Under both Republican and Democratic presidents, those officials have waffled in ways similar to the most recent seemingly conflicting comments by Minerals Management. Inconsistency has been the rule since the anti-drilling movement got its big impetus from the historic Santa Barbara oil spill of 1968.
Federal officials now say nothing will happen at least until later this summer, when state coastal commissioners are due to rule on whether federal lease extensions are consistent with state laws.
If the commission says they’re not, a new court fight over who has final authority can be expected.
Which means the fate of the California coast remains up in the air.
The question: Why should there be the possibility of despoiling California’s beaches when Bush has removed any such possibility from Florida, whose offshore waters are said by some oil companies to contain far more oil than California’s?
