House Republican group backs Senate drilling bill

[Ron Burgundy]

Reuters - A group of Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday said the House should abandon its broad legislation to expand offshore drilling, giving a boost to a much narrower Senate drilling bill that could pass in Congress' lame duck session.

The Senate has approved a bill to open a small area near the Alabama-Florida offshore border in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and natural gas drilling, while the House cleared more wide-sweeping legislation that allows drilling in most U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coastal waters more than 100 miles from shore. Currently, energy exploration there is banned.

Senate and House Republican leaders have so far been unsuccessful in reconciling their differences to pass a final drilling bill before Democrats take majority control of the Congress next January. Lawmakers return in December for a short lame duck session to finish work on remaining important bills.

Senate leaders have already told their counterparts in the House that they should pass the Senate's drilling bill, because the House legislation is too expansive and controversial to clear both chambers.

A group of 18 self-described moderate House Republicans on Monday took a similar position, urging House Majority Leader John Boehner to drop the House drilling bill.

"If the House needs to consider an (offshore drilling) bill, we ought to take up the Senate-passed bill without any changes," said the lawmakers, led by House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, in a letter to Boehner.

"Continuing efforts to promote the House bill - which could open the entire U.S. coastline to oil drilling, and which would sweep away environmental protections, undermine local control, and increase the deficit - would signal that we have not gotten the message of Election Day," they wrote.

Republicans lost their 12-year control of the House in the November 7 election, and after the counting was finished in two close races Republicans also became the minority party in the Senate.

The Bush administration has said that at this point the Senate bill has the best chance of passing the Congress.

Natural gas users, from farmers to manufacturers, are pushing for more supplies which they believe will lower their energy costs. They argue passing the Senate bill, even it opens a much smaller area to drilling compared to the House legislation, is better than getting nothing.

Environmental groups, which worked hard to get more pro-green Democrats elected to serve in the new Congress, are against expanded offshore drilling areas because they fear it would lead to more spills that would damage shorelines and ecosystems.