Bob Tippee
With a deft political dodge late last month, Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner called attention to an offshore-access initiative that's intriguing but flawed.
Warner vetoed a bill calling on the state to support a lifting of the moratoriums that have for years blocked federal oil and gas leasing off the East and West Coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
Warner didn't take a strong stand on the leasing question. He instead objected to the state bill for usurping his management of the state's lobbying office and for supporting federal legislation that doesn't yet exist.
The nonexistent legislation is a draft proposal circulating in Congress called State Enhanced Authority for Coastal and Offshore Resources (SEACOR).
SEACOR would give coastal states resistant to oil and gas leasing more influence than they have now over federally regulated activities off their shores. It also would give them money.
It would, for example, extend state offshore boundaries to 12 nautical miles offshore from 3 miles in most cases now. State land of Texas and Florida now extends to 12 miles offshore.
The initiative also would increase the state share of oil and gas royalties.
The flawed part of SEACOR is the cleverest. It would let states veto or limit leasing in 20-mile increments out to 60 miles from shore. Limits under this provision could take the form of "natural gas preference leases" allowing production of gas or condensate but not oil without approval of the state's governor.
There are two large problems here: nature and the US Constitution.
Because gas often occurs with oil and because it's impossible and senseless to drill for one substance and spurn the other, preferential leases wouldn't be worth much.
Also, the bounty from federal land belongs to all Americans. Authority to preclude activities important to national interests on federal land 60 miles offshore is too much power for a single state.
Still, SEACOR represents important recognition that the US faces problems with gas supply and that the most immediately available solution is increased leasing of federal land.
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