Drilling

LONDON - One of the largest oil companies in the world, Royal Dutch/Shell, has promised to avoid exploring or drilling on sites that carry the United Nations' World Heritage designation. It is the first energy company to make such a promise. Shell's decision comes a week after the International Council on Mining and Metals, a group of the world's 15 largest mining companies, said its members would stop exploring or mining on World Heritage sites. Taken together, the commitments are a "big step forward," said Mechtild Rossler, director of European heritage for UNESCO, the U.N. agency that controls the program.

WASHINGTON -- Racing to adjourn for the year, the House was poised to pass a final package of budget cuts early this morning and was expected to consider other key legislation before sunrise. After lengthy negotiations over the weekend, lawmakers reached deals on several measures, including the spending cuts - worth $41.6 billion over five years - and defense spending that included a provision to allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Senate is expected to vote on the measures this week.

State officials have decided to let petroleum giant Texaco Inc. drill an exploratory well in Southern Maryland, but environmentalists vow to fight it as a potential threat to Chesapeake Bay.At a news conference in Annapolis today, Department of Natural Resources officials announced approval of a permit to Texaco.The permit allows Texaco to drill 10,000 feet deep in a farm field near Faulkner in Charles County, where oil company officials say they expect to find natural gas rather than oil -- if they find anything at all.The company is drilling a similar exploratory well across the Potomac River in Westmoreland County, Va., according to DNR officials.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources yesterday denied all appeals of its decision to let Texaco drill an exploratory well in Charles County, setting the stage for a court battle with environmentalists.DNR officials released a letter refusing a request by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for a new public hearing on Texaco's drilling permit. The letter said that the Annapolis-based environmental group lacked legal standing in the issue and dismissed as speculation the group's fears that discovery of gas or oil might harm the bay.DNR denied two other appeals on similar grounds, spokesman Rob Gould said.

WASHINGTON - After nation-hopping across Europe, President Bush returned home and immediately narrowed the scope of his focus from world affairs to Florida (and Bush family) politics. The president handed his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, a boost yesterday by announcing that the administration had agreed to pay $235 million to block several oil companies from drilling off the Panhandle and in the Everglades. About half the money, $115 million, would buy out nine oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

Optimism abounded in Garrett County in September, when more than 500 landowners signed leasing contracts allowing a Texas-based oil and gas company the right to drill on their properties for the natural gas deposits believed to be underground. Landowners were to receive, among other concessions, a $1,150-per-acre up-front payment on five-year leases. The first landowners were to receive the payments within 90 days - or the first week of this month. But then the economy soured, and investors in the deal became reluctant to make sizable financial considerations up front, county officials said.

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan coalition of coastal-state lawmakers beat back an effort in the House yesterday to weaken the decades-old ban on new oil and gas drilling offshore, but they are bracing for a potentially tougher battle ahead. The vote was 262-157 to defeat an effort to exempt new natural gas drilling from the federal moratorium, which covers most coastal waters except for large parts of the Gulf of Mexico. While environmentalists celebrated their victory, they said they were worried about other efforts in Congress to break through the federal moratorium on new offshore drilling.

Western Maryland may never rival Texas as a fuel producer, but geologists at Fox Gas & Oil Co. believe there are significant deposits of natural gas some 10,000 feet under the rugged mountains of Allegany County. And that's where it's likely to stay unless Maryland breaks a bureaucratic logjam that has frustrated Fox's drilling plans at a time when demand and prices for natural gas are unprecedented. Over the past eight years, Fox has sunk more than $3 million into efforts to tap into the state's reserves of what is considered the least polluting of the fossil fuels.

WASHINGTON -- One year after President Clinton pleased environmentalists by declaring a wide swath of southern Utah a national monument, his administration decided yesterday to open the region to oil and gas drilling.The Bureau of Land Management, taking advantage of what critics say was a loosely worded presidential declaration, gave Conoco Inc. permission to explore for oil and gas in the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on the basis of a lease signed before Clinton declared the land off-limits.

WASHINGTON - By a decisive margin, the Senate rejected President Bush's bid to open Alaska's wildlife refuge to oil drilling, siding yesterday with those who argued that the potential boost in domestic fuel supplies wasn't worth the risk of damaging America's last unspoiled wilderness. Months of highly charged debate, which pitted some of the nation's most politically potent interest groups against each other, concluded with a tally of 54-46 against drilling. Supporters fell five votes short of a majority and 14 votes fewer than the 60 they needed to shut down a filibuster by opponents.