WASHINGTON — President Bush lifted a long-standing White House ban Monday on new oil and gas drilling off the nation's coastlines and pressured Congress to take a similar step, stoking the battle over how Washington should respond to high gasoline prices.
Bush's decision to lift the executive order, which was imposed by his father in 1990 and renewed by President Clinton, will have no effect unless Congress cancels its own ban on offshore drilling.
But with the price of gasoline sitting above $4 a gallon, his action places the possibility of new drilling squarely in the public debate and gives him a political cudgel. Lawmakers are increasingly nervous about high gas prices in an election year, and Bush made clear he intended to use the pro-drilling argument against Congress' majority party.
"With this action, the executive branch's restrictions on this exploration have been cleared away," he told reporters in the White House Rose Garden.
"This means that the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the U.S. Congress.
"Now the ball is squarely in Congress' court," he added. "Democratic leaders can show that they have finally heard the frustrations of the American people by matching the action I have taken today."
Some drilling advocates have cited estimates that 18 billion barrels of oil could be recovered.
Democrats and environmentalists said that even if obstacles to new drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico were quickly lifted, the resulting gasoline would be years away, as refineries are running at or near capacity -- so there would be little or no immediate effect on supplies or prices.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), rejecting the president's challenge, countered that Bush should tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices by increasing supplies.
He has refused to do so, arguing that the reserve was created to relieve a national emergency.
The president's position raised special concern among politicians from California, where an oil spill off Santa Barbara in 1969 soaked birds and coated beaches in sludge.
"In California, we know offshore drilling is not the answer," Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
Schwarzenegger called instead for development of alternative energy sources -- a category that includes wind and solar power -- and said a choice of power supplies was "the only way we will ultimately bring down fuel costs."
