WASHINGTON -- More than a dozen areas off Maryland and near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay are being considered for oil and gas drilling rights by the Bush administration, although lawmakers are working to scrap a plan they say is environmentally risky.
The proposal for oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic coast -- part of the five-year national energy plan unveiled by President Bush earlier this year -- enters its first phase this summer with the release of a draft report that will consider 1,000 proposed tracts from New Jersey to Georgia.
Among the plots are about 15 9-square-mile tracts nearly 100 miles off the Maryland coast and another 31 tracts off Virginia, about 15 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. By next spring, the proposed 1,000 tracts will be winnowed to 250 for oil or gas exploration. Two leasings are planned, one in 1994 and another in 1997.
But lawmakers from Maryland and other coastal states say the potential for environmental harm is too great and have called for a one-year continuation of a moratorium -- scheduled to end in October -- on any leasing for oil and gas drilling. Although there have been test wells drilled off the East Coast during the past decade, there has been no commercial exploration.
"This area supports a rich diversity of economically important and ecologically fragile biological resources. Each year, tourism and commercial and recreational fishing contribute billions of dollars to the economies of our states," 19 Democratic and Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to Representative Sidney R. Yates, D-Ill., chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, which backed the moratorium early this month.
"Compared to this, the mineral resources that could be extracted from the entire lease sale are insignificant," wrote the lawmakers, who included Representatives Wayne T. Gilchrest, R-Md.-1st, and Constance A. Morella, R-Md.-8th.
This week the House Appropriations Committee will consider the one-year moratorium on the plan.
Meanwhile, the four senators from Maryland and Virginia are pushing for a similar moratorium in the Senate, saying the potential environmental risks are too great.
The administration's energy package, pointing to the specter of foreign energy dependence, issued a renewed call "to stimulate oil production" in the United States with "responsible" development of offshore oil resources.
