Corzine opposes offshore drilling

BELMAR, N.J. - With the Atlantic Ocean in the background, Gov. Corzine and other New Jersey Democrats yesterday decried a Republican effort to lift a federal moratorium on offshore oil and natural-gas drilling and called for a permanent ban.

The 127-mile-long Jersey Shore is one of the state's "signature assets" that drives $37 billion a year in tourism, Corzine said. That could be irreparably harmed if an accident or spill spoiled New Jersey beaches, he said.

"In many ways, it shapes our way of life, and we will fight any attempt to jeopardize it," said Corzine, who spoke on the boardwalk along with U.S. Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez and U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone. "The Bush-McCain team would do well to remember that true leadership isn't about making easy choices; it's about making the right choices.

"This is a threat to an entire industry and to the ecology and environment of the Jersey Shore," the governor said. "Drilling for oil and gas off the Jersey Shore is a bad idea."

President Bush and other Republicans, including Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, are calling on Congress to overturn a law that protects the environmentally sensitive Continental Shelf, which lies about 75 miles off the New Jersey coast. A 1982 congressional moratorium and presidential order prevents oil and gas drilling along the entire Atlantic coast until 2012.

The energy crisis of the 1970s prompted previous offshore oil and natural-gas exploration off the East Coast. A few pockets of natural gas were discovered in deep-water sites that apparently were commercially unfeasible at the time because of technological limitations.

Proponents of giving oil companies offshore drilling rights say the plan could yield at least 18 billion barrels of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Opponents call that a drop in the bucket, saying that oil drilled in the mid-Atlantic likely would give the United States about a 30-day fuel supply, said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.

"Dick Cheney and Big Oil wrote the energy policy that has led the price of oil to double, and now they want to use it as a excuse to drill everywhere from Alaska to Belmar," Tittel said.

Others contend that offshore drilling wouldn't provide any relief from $4-a-gallon, or higher, gas prices until years from now, if ever. Oil companies hold similar leases on about 68 million acres of federal lands they have so far not explored.

"We recognize the pain that families are feeling at the pump, but experts say it could be 2018, 10 years from now, before we could even get the first drop of that oil, and it would 2030 before we could see the effect on gas prices," Menendez said. "None of this does anything about gas prices today. What we need to do is to continue to create a realistic plan that makes us less dependent on oil instead of more dependent on it."

The push by oil companies to open up the Continental Shelf, Menendez said, is an effort to gain control of yet more federal lands and increase individual company portfolios.

Lautenberg called the offshore drilling plan a "gift to the oil companies" that ultimately could jeopardize the state's economy and environment.

"It's a sham," Lautenberg said. "Bush and McCain like to pretend their plan to drill for oil here is the cure for everything from the energy crisis to the common cold. But it's really a terrible idea that would do nothing to cut gas prices."

McCain's campaign did not issue a statement about New Jersey's Democratic opposition to offshore drilling, but Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R., Morris) called for Corzine to spend less time on presidential politics and more time dealing with the state's own issues.

DeCroce said Corzine has refused to rule out a gas tax increase and signed a budget that included an extension to the public utility tax, which had been slated to be phased out this year.

"Instead of criticizing candidates for federal office who are at least offering plausible, scientifically sound solutions to satisfy America's energy needs, Corzine should start leveling with the people of New Jersey about what he intends to do, or not do, about rising fuel costs," DeCroce told the Associated Press.

New Jersey officials said that, without a federal ban on offshore drilling, such activity in other states like Virginia or New York - which might favor it - ultimately could affect the environment here.

In 2006, Virginia began a push to overturn the moratorium after the U.S. Department of the Interior Mineral Management Service floated a five-year plan to offer a lease to a private oil company to drill offshore from Virginia.

The government's plan called for leasing a triangular-shaped area beyond a 25-mile coastal buffer off the Virginia coast, about 100 miles south of Cape May. The plan was that oil-drilling platforms could be built there. The MMS cited studies that there was enough natural gas in that area to heat 14 million homes for 15 years.

Last year, New York state considered granting a Manhattan-based energy company the right to build off its coast - and about 19 miles off New Jersey - a $1.8 billion 60-acre industrial island terminal for liquefied natural gas.