Dole supports lifting block on oil explorations

Media General News Service and Wire Reports
Published: June 27, 2008

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole says that North Carolina should have the option of allowing oil exploration off the state’s coast, backing away from her long-held support of a federal moratorium on Atlantic drilling.

In a statement Wednesday to The Associated Press, Dole, R-N.C., said she supports lifting a 27-year-old moratorium that has prohibited exploration off the North Carolina coast.

“Now, more than ever, responsible and practical steps are needed to increase our energy independence and strengthen economic and national security,” she said.

Dole, facing re-election for the first time, said that the option should be available to states so long as the exploration is safe, clean and not visible from land.

She plans to sign on to a Republican bill allowing states to open areas at least 50 miles off their shorelines to exploration that could bring in extra revenue for the states.

For years, Dole had supported the ban on oil exploration, saying that it was necessary to protect tourism and marine habitat.

“There is no question that now, more than ever, we must work to end our dependence on foreign oil,” she said in a floor speech in 2005. “But we cannot do so by ignoring the wishes and economic needs of the majority of the people of North Carolina and many other coastal states who oppose this exploration.”

But as gas prices have passed $4 a gallon, Dole has increasingly softened her stance on offshore exploration.

At a forum with Democratic rival Kay Hagan last weekend, she said she still opposed the idea but would consider a bill if it came across her desk. Hagan, like fellow Democrats now in Congress, opposes offshore drilling.

Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, have said that offshore drilling could help the nation ease its dependence on foreign oil and provide short-term relief for gas prices. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has opposed the notion.

Unlike Dole, other Republican elected officials have long backed offshore drilling.

“The good Lord gave us the resources we need to be energy independent. It’s foolish not to use those resources,” U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican who represents North Carolina’s 5th District, said yesterday.

Foxx said she is pleased that Dole shifted her position on the issue.

“I can understand people changing positions right now,” Foxx said.

“We’re in a very different situation than we’ve been in historically.

“The price of gasoline is doing great damage to hardworking Americans. She’s responding to changing conditions,” she said.

A spokesman for Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said that rising gas prices have not changed Burr’s stance on offshore drilling.

Burr believes that each state should have the right to decide if drilling should take place off its coast, and strongly supports the measure for North Carolina, said his spokesman, Chris Walker.

“It can be done in an environmentally friendly way,” Walker said.

The country must ultimately find a way to break its dependence on foreign oil through investment in new technologies to reduce petroleum demand and other means, Walker said.

Until then, exploration and drilling off the coast could provide a “short-term patch, as we work toward our long-term goal of energy independence,” he said.

Like Burr, U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, a Republican who represents the state’s 6th District, supports drilling off the North Carolina’s coast—but only if authorized by the state and outside of a 50-mile buffer.

Last week, Gov. Mike Easley said he sees a “very poor” chance that North Carolina would move to allow offshore drilling if the federal ban is ever lifted.

The Interior Department estimates that opening remaining U.S. coastal waters could provide access to 18 billion barrels of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas beneath the 574 million acres.

But experts said they believe that it could take years before production begins.

Leasing likely wouldn’t begin until 2012 for the Pacific, Atlantic and eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the plans wouldn’t significantly affect production or prices before 2030, according to a report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration last year.

■ Media General News Service reporter Sean Mussenden contributed to this story. He can be reached at 202-662-7668 or at .