The Bush administration on Monday announced it will drop its legal fight with California over offshore oil leases and said it will try to buy back the leases, virtually ending the chance of new drilling off the state's coast.
In a sharp policy reversal, the administration is no longer contesting the state's role in controlling the expansion of offshore oil drilling.
"Our administration strongly supports environmental protection and understands the importance of this issue to the people of California," Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said in a statement. The administration "respects the wishes of the people of California," Norton added. "We believe our efforts will be better spent in negotiation rather than in continued litigation with the state."
Norton's message was dramatically different from the one she delivered last June rejecting Gov. Gray Davis' request that the administration extend its generosity to California and buy back California's offshore leases as it had in Florida.
At that time, she argued the circumstances in the two states were quite different, including that "Florida opposes coastal drilling and California does not."
The administration's decision means that any plans for oil drilling in federal waters would have to be reviewed by the California Coastal Commission, which already has jurisdiction over drilling in state waters. Ever since the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969, politicians in both parties in California have opposed new drilling, making approval by the commission highly unlikely.
Virtually all of California's coast already was off limits to new leases because of moratoriums ordered by Congress and presidents dating back to George H.W. Bush.
Monday's decision involved the fate of the only 36 leases still in contention. They are tracts off the coast of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties that have been under lease for more than 20 years but have never been developed although they sit atop as much as 1 billion barrels of low-grade crude.
The federal government had waged a three-year legal battle with the state over those leases, losing the first two rounds in federal court. With Monday's decision, any appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was abandoned.
The announcement won immediate praise from Davis, who has repeatedly called on President Bush to halt the court fight and buy back the oil and gas leases as the administration did last year in Florida, where Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, was running for reelection.
