U.S. NEEDS FASTER OCS LEASING

Even before it publishes its first 5 year oil and gas lease plan for the Outer Continental Shelf, the Bush administration is running for cover.

Barry Williamson, director of the Minerals Management Service, promises a leasing approach "vastly different" from the successful but underutilized area-wide strategy in effect now. In charming deference to two imminent decisions, Williamson won't publish the OCS schedule until after the Department of Energy releases its draft national energy strategy and the President rules on contested sales off California and Florida. But Williamson has said enough to make the new MMS approach clear. It's going to be slim pickings on the OCS through at least 1997.

"We have to be in tune with the American people, in tune with the environment, in tune with the resources," Williamson says. "And that means we'll have a slower, more prudent, more focused plan, more focused approach." This glorious non sequitur deserves close attention.

GETTING IN TUNE

First, the business about being in tune with American people. In view of Williamson's conclusion, "people" as used here probably refers to two groups: coastal residents who don't wish to see oil platforms, and Americans angry over recent tanker spills but confused about how they relate to offshore rigs and platforms. About the first group, government officials can do little but search the antileasing blather for evidence of real environmental threat, alter plans if necessary when they find some, and ignore the rest. To the second, mostly confused group, the government can continue to point out that tankers spill far more oil than rigs and platforms. Then it must act as though it believes what it says.

Officials must further recognize that to be in tune with Americans also means acknowledging the copious appetites these people possess, whatever their opinions on OCS leasing, for fuel. They must recognize the economic and strategic importance of secure petroleum supplies and the contribution imported oil makes to the U.S. trade deficit. To be in tune with Americans means acknowledging Americans' interests in these issues, too-even when Americans themselves do not.

In the matter of being in tune with the resource, Williamson surely knows that this happy condition ultimately requires drilling, a prerequisite of which is leasing. That's why laws require the process. And a long, safe history proves there's nothing out of environmental tune about leasing and drilling. The same cannot be said about growing tanker congestion, the certain consequence of not leasing and not drilling.

FASTER LEASING NEEDED

To be in total tune with Americans, the environment, and the resource, therefore, requires faster, not slower, leasing. But Williamson is concerned with politics more than logic. Right now, politics exaggerates the environmental risks of OCS activity. Outside the central and western Gulf of Mexico, politics has mostly shut down not just leasing but also drilling under existing leases where coastal residents raised sufficient fuss.

Bowing to reality, U.S. oil companies were taking their exploration money outside the country well before Williamson tipped the administration's OCS leasing hand. Their job, after all, is to provide a continuous supply of oil and gas from wherever they must go to get the job done. Williamson and his colleagues also are recognizing political realities. But their job is to make maximum, environmentally safe use of the domestic resource, and so to make federal acreage consistently available for lease. Sometimes, that job conflicts with momentary politics. Sometimes, national leaders must lead.