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...more welcome after a Supreme Court decision this month that sent jitters through the ranks of state and environmental officials in coastal areas. By a 5-to-4 vote, the tribunal ruled that the Federal Government can ignore the objections of affected states at the time the Interior Department offers oil-or gas-drilling leases on the continental shelf, the sloping underwater strip of land at a continent's edge. The Federal Government has traditionally controlled all drilling on the shelf beyond three miles, except off Texas and Florida, which maintain a ten-mile jurisdiction.-The decision, written...
...continental shelf, an estimated 44 billion bbl. of oil, nearly half again as much as all proven reserves. (The U.S. gets about 10% of its domestic production from offshore wells.) However, Clark immediately moved to reassure the coastal states and environmentalists. Under his stewardship, he said, the Interior Department will seek to avoid the battling that characterized the offshore-leasing program in the past, even while it continues to pursue essentially the same pro-development policies as those of his predecessor. Said Clark: "We can work as partners...
Under Watt, many of these concerns were either ignored or minimized. Interior officials liked to point out that natural underwater seeps off California's Coal Oil Point, near Santa Barbara, alone released at least four times as much oil as the 5,700 bbl. spilled annually in offshore production within U.S. waters. In July 1981, as a matter of highest national priority, Watt announced a program to lease nearly all of the outer shelf, a total of a billion acres, in five years. He offered up huge tracts (as much as 40 million acres at a time...
When he succeeded Watt last November, the more judicious Clark, who in fact was a California Supreme Court justice from 1973 to 1981, promptly removed the two Interior officials most closely identified with Watt's leasing policies. He postponed indefinitely two bitterly fought sales: one in Southern California, scheduled for April, the other in the Georges Bank, to have been held...
...added in a speech following the Supreme Court decision, would be addressed as early as possible in the leasing process. He also promised that offshore tracts of little interest to the oil industry but of great environmental value would not be nominated for leasing. The Clark view, said an Interior official, is "Why buy an unnecessary fight...