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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (296738)	7/26/2006 9:55:44 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572970

Senate to vote on drilling, House talks loom By Chris Baltimore Tue Jul 25, 5:17 PM ET The U.S. Senate will move toward a key procedural vote expected on Wednesday that would clear the way for the chamber to consider opening waters in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida to oil and natural gas drilling. But the Senate plan to develop 8.3 million acres of land on the Outer Continental Shelf off Florida is much narrower than bill passed by the House of Representatives, and Republican leaders are already grappling over which version will eventually become law. The House bill would lift a 25-year moratorium in most U.S. coastal waters over 100 miles offshore. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he would call a procedural vote on Wednesday that would allow the Senate to vote on the drilling plan later this week or early next week. Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, said Congress should pass the narrower version now and seek to widen it later. But Rep. Richard Pombo (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the House Resources Committee, has refused to accept any restrictions on his ability to expand the drilling plan when and if it comes before a House-Senate bargaining committee that would reconcile differences in the two bills. "I think (Pombo's) vision would be best accomplished by taking one step at a time and most assuredly you've got to get (the bill) through the Senate," Domenici told reporters on Tuesday. "The best thing is to get this bill done." "It's way too early in the process to say that we're going to agree with whatever the Senate comes up with," Pombo said. Complicating matters, Florida's two senators both have concerns about what could happen to the drilling bill during talks with the House. Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record) said he wants up-front assurances that House Republican leaders will accept the Senate version of the bill before he supports it. "During these negotiations, supporters of more drilling easily could adopt their own horrendous plan to allow oil and gas rigs just several miles off the nation's shorelines," Nelson said. The Senate plan as written would ban drilling less than 125 miles off Florida until 2022. Republican Sen. Mel Martinez said he opposes the House drilling plan, but wants to let normal negotiations play out. "I'm not so sure we should enter into negotiations with the House by demanding that their views not be considered," Martinez said. Senate leaders were hoping for support from Alaska's two Republican senators, even after they declined to share with Alaska revenues that could amount to billions of dollars. Lawmakers from the coastal states of Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana support the plan, after securing a deal that would share about a third of royalty revenues for new leases signed in the new production areas, which could send at least $170 billion to the four Gulf Coast states over 60 years. (Additional reporting by Tom Doggett and Richard Cowan)