Lois Capps: “I yield myself 3 minutes. Our amendment restores the longstanding bipartisan ban that currently protects sensitive…”

“I yield myself 3 minutes. Our amendment restores the longstanding bipartisan ban that currently protects sensitive coastal and marine areas from new drilling. We support the current ban not just because the coastlines are beautiful; they are. And not just because we believe our coastlines provide valuable environmental habitat, and they do. We support the ban because we know our coasts are the economic engines of our communities, and that is threatened by new drilling. The people in these communities whom we represent know the value of their coastline, and that is why they are so against new drilling. Under this bill, we could literally see the push for new drilling as close as 3 miles to our coasts begin almost immediately. The oil and gas companies, awash in profits from our constituents' pockets, would have you believe that all offshore resources are off limits today; that we are only talking about drilling for natural gas and not oil; and that today's high gas prices demand this new drilling. These arguments simply don't hold up to scrutiny. First, the industry already has access to the vast majority of natural gas in the Outer Continental Shelf. Indeed, according to the Bush administration, about 80 percent of the known reserves are located in areas where drilling is already allowed. Furthermore, the oil and gas industry already owns drilling rights to more than 4,000 untapped leases in the Gulf of Mexico alone.…”