Rising gas prices shift energy debate

Just one year after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 and triggered a massive oil spill, there’s little appetite among legislators for new safety regulations. Instead, a single concern is prompting a drive for more drilling: $4-a-gallon gas.

Increased drilling won’t bring down the immediate cost U.S. consumers pay at the pump, but soaring fuel prices have transformed the U.S. energy debate, motivating the House this week to take up at least one of three bills that would ease the way for more energy exploration off both coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico. The first bill likely to hit the floor would revive canceled lease sales off Virginia and in the gulf.

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The administration’s point man for oil and gas drilling regulations, Michael Bromwich, sharply questioned the House bills and defended the cautious approach taken since the end of last year’s five-month moratorium.

“There is a real risk that . . . we’re going to end up unraveling and undoing many of the reforms we’ve worked so hard to do over the last 10 months,” he said in an interview. “And that would be a tragedy.”

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), who has shepherded three bills through his committee aimed at boosting oil and gas production in the gulf as well as off both coasts and the Arctic, said he is confident public pressure will provide the political momentum his legislation needs to make it into law. On Thursday at a roundtable with constituents in Yakima, Wash., farmers expressed concern about how the cost of fuel would affect their operations.

“What will get the Senate to act is the rising price of gas at the pump,” Hastings said in a phone interview. “If my colleagues are hearing what I’m hearing in my district, clearly there has been a mood change.”

The bills would overhaul the permitting process to make it faster, which in some cases means jettisoning the more exacting reviews put in place after the BP spill. One measure would require the interior secretary to act on a permit to drill within 30 days; if no decision is made after a maximum of 60 days, the permit would be granted. It also would restart within 30 days gulf permits that were approved last year before the spill. Eleven exploration wells that were suspended in the gulf have been given permission to drill again, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

While the measure would require the interior secretary to conduct a safety review of permit applications, it would use the environmental analyses from before the explosion — which have since come under criticism as inadequate.

Another bill would expand drilling by establishing the first national production goal as part of Interior’s five-year offshore leasing plan; it would include lease sales in the areas containing the greatest-known oil and gas reserves.

American Petroleum Institute president Jack Gerard, whose group represents major U.S. oil companies, said the bills are “a direct outcome and consequence of the political and economic reality we face.”