Senate Panel OKs Coastal Oil Survey

The survey of offshore energy resources -- along with a controversial measure to give federal regulators final say over the location of coastal terminals to receive liquefied natural gas imports -- have emerged as issues as an energy bill heads to the Senate floor.

Bush has urged Congress to send him an energy bill by August. The House has approved a bill, and the Senate is expected to follow suit next month. But differences between the two versions could keep Bush from receiving a final product.

Neither bill would do much to provide immediate relief from high gasoline prices. They both include measures to promote domestic production of oil, gas, coal and nuclear power and to encourage conservation, establish rules to ensure the reliability of the electric grids and mandate greater use of ethanol in the nation's gasoline supply.

The Senate bill also would authorize as much as $250 million over five years to provide rebates to consumers who purchase energy-efficient appliances. And it would direct the president to implement measures to save 1 million barrels of oil a day by 2015.

The Senate energy committee sent its bill to the floor Thursday with strong support, 21-1. But that vote masked fights that are expected once the bill comes up for debate in mid-June.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is expected to try to strip the bill of the inventory of offshore gas resources because of concern it could lead to ending the 24-year moratorium on new offshore drilling.

Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) called the inventory a "step onto a slippery slope."

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), recalling his immigrant past, said: "I have a real aversion to inventories, because I have a memory as a child in Cuba that preceding the confiscation of property by the government, they inventoried it first. So I have always taken a little bit of skeptical view about a benign inventory."

Interest groups are watching the issue closely.

Richard A. Charter, co-chairman of the National Outer Continental Shelf Coalition, an environmental advocacy group, said an inventory could damage fish and other marine life because of explosive sonic blasts of air used to gather a seabed's geologic profile.