Lifeblood from the ocean floor: the lame-duck Congress has the opportunity to tackle U.S. dependence on foreign oil and save hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs with a deep-ocean drilling bill.

Energy dependence has always been an Achilles' heel for Fidel Castro's decrepit communist regime. From 1959 to 1991, Castro relied on his Soviet sponsors for subsidized oil supplies. More recently, he has been forced to turn to Comrade Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has been more than willing to supply his fellow Marxist with discounted oil, to the tune of about 98,000 barrels per day, more than half of Cuba's daily consumption.

But Cuba is set to break out of its decades-old status of energy dependence and economic backwardness. It is sitting on an offshore energy treasure chest that is estimated to contain 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Over a dozen nations and oil companies have negotiated joint ventures with Havana--or are in the process of doing so--to cash in on these deep-water energy sources.

So, Cuba, China, Venezuela, Brazil, Canada, India, and others may soon be benefiting from the energy reserves a few miles off our coast. But the United States, which is even more dependent on foreign oil than Cuba, is sitting on the sidelines. Unlike Cuba, which does not have the technical ability to drill for oil and gas on its own, the United States has always been a leader in deep ocean exploration and drilling. According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, America's deep seas on the outer continental shelf (OCS) contain 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (the U.S. consumes 23 TCF per year) and 86 billion barrels of oil (the U.S. imports 4.5 billion per year). However, federal government policies are preventing us from accessing that treasure trove of desperately needed energy.

No other nation in the world prohibits development of its offshore energy. But, incredibly, federal prohibitions on OCS drilling over the past 25 years have caused the United States to send trillions of dollars to overseas oil producers and have jeopardized our national security by making us dangerously dependent on foreign energy sources. According to the House Resources Committee, the United States sends around $500 billion annually to foreign energy producers, which is a major cause of our huge annual trade deficits and the continuing precipitous loss of our manufacturing base.

Getting the Go-ahead

The lame-duck Congress, which will be back in session for a week before Thanksgiving and then again in early December, has a golden opportunity to do something important that would solve a large part of our energy and trade balance problems. Legislation to open up development of our offshore energy will be on the agenda.

Before the November elections, both houses of Congress passed bills that deal with OCS drilling. The House version, known as the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2006 (DOER Act, H.R. 4761), is the far more comprehensive of the two, dealing with all U.S. coastal waters. The Senate bill, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 (GOMES Act, S. 3711), deals only with a portion of the energy available in the waters along the Gulf states. The House bill, for instance, would open up access to nearly 10 times the reserves of natural gas as the Senate version (86.5 trillion cubic feet versus 9 trillion).

Amazingly, the House's DOER Act passed by a large margin (232 to 187) on June 29, as a bipartisan coalition of labor and business overcame the obstructionist efforts of the radical environmental lobby. "Today marks a historic day for the House of Representatives and the United States," Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) said, after the bill passed. "Never before have we accomplished so much for American jobs and energy security in single, stand-alone bill. The DOER Act will finally correct the one-size-fits-all bans that were enacted during times when energy production and environmental protection were thought to be mutually exclusive. They are not, and today a bipartisan majority in the House voted for both. The balance struck in this bill will save and create American jobs, lower prices for consumers, and deliver to coastal states unprecedented power to protect 100 miles of their seas."

Bipartisan Bill

The bipartisan majority was obtained in the House by crafting a bill that intelligently addressed many serious issues and appealed to many constituencies: industry, union members, truckers, automobile owners, coastal state governors and legislators, and hurricane-prone communities. The high cost of energy is making it impossible for many U.S. companies to remain competitive here and is driving them to relocate their plants overseas.

Plant relocations have been a major factor in the loss of nearly five million manufacturing jobs in the past 20 years. Labor union members have been especially hard hit by these job losses. Opening access to America's storehouse of currently locked-up energy resources will not only directly create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the energy-related economy, but save millions more jobs from death by outsourcing.

Another feature of the DOER Act that is responsible for its bipartisan support is its "states' rights" appeal, which gives the states control over their own coastal waters while dramatically increasing the revenues available to the states from offshore energy production. Under current policy, states exercise authority over only waters within three miles of their shores; the federal government takes over from there out to the 200-mile limit. Under the DOER Act, states would have complete authority over their coastal waters out to 100 miles.

This turn toward a more sensible federalism would allow individual states to determine for themselves what is best for their people. States under this plan would be free to decide for themselves whether or not to develop their OCS oil and gas reserves, and under what conditions, rather than having these decisions dictated by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. The governors of Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi have already spoken on the matter, giving their endorsements to the bill.

With billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties at stake, as well as lower energy prices, it is not difficult to see the reason for high levels of support for the DOER Act among state officials. Louisiana and Mississippi, especially, still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, could expect to receive billions of dollars in energy royalties in the years ahead to restore infrastructure destroyed by the storm and protect their people from future catastrophic storm damage. Revenues to both the federal and state governments would also increase from individual and corporate taxes as more oil and gas reserves are drilled and brought on line.

In the final days of the 109th Congress, the pressure will be on from the rabid environmental lobby to stop all OCS drilling, while the GOP leadership will be pushing for adoption of the Senate's more "moderate" GOMES Act, over the House's DOER Act.

Readers are encouraged to contact their U.S. representative and senators in support of the House-passed DOER Act, rather than the weaker Senate version. To send a letter electronically, go to http:// capwiz.com/jbs/home/

Offshore, Off-limits

The current Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) energy dilemma can be traced back to a series of actions begun by Congress in 1982 to stop the federal Department of Interior from issuing leases for coastal energy development by cutting off appropriations needed to carry out the leasing program. This effectively put 85 percent of the OCS--virtually everything but the western and central Gulf of Mexico--off-limits to development. This lock-up of our desperately needed resources has been a standard feature of the annual Interior Department appropriation ever since.

Not content with this congressional obstruction of our nation's access to energy, the executive branch decided to pile on as well. In 1990. President George Bush (the senior) declared a moratorium prohibiting oil and gas leasing and drilling in "environmentally sensitive areas"--about 99 percent of the California coast, most of Florida's gulf coast, the Georges Bank, and areas off Oregon and Washington--until after the year 2000, In 1998, President Bill Clinton extended the moratorium through 2012. Thus, responsibility for our present predicament can be laid at the feet both of Republicans and Democrats, Congress and the White House.

President Bush and the congressional GOP leadership have made a show over the past six years of trying to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska for environmentally safe oil and gas drilling. That has been the president's "number one" energy priority. However, he has never gone to the mat on this issue and used the full weight of his office, as he has done on pushing. for instance, for his federal prescription drug plan or the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Even after the 2004 elections gave him a 55-44 Republican majority in the Senate and $3-a-gallon gasoline gave him strong public support. Bush failed to aggressively push for freeing our ANWR energy resources. Now. in the new Democrat-controlled Congress, opening ANWR is a dead issue.

However, the president could still unilaterally open up some OCS exploration and development by simply canceling the executive moratorium put in place by his father and President Clinton. He has had the power to do that for the past six years, but has not done so. Nor is he likely to do so in his remaining two years. And even if he did remove the moratorium, the next president may reimpose it. Thus the need for the DOER Act. say supporters.

--WILLIAM F. JASPER