Offshore Exploration

The environmental movement, only recently poised for major advances on global warming and other issues, has suddenly found itself on the defensive as high gasoline prices shift the political climate nationwide and trigger defections by longtime supporters. Opposition to offshore drilling -- once ironclad in places like California and Florida -- has begun to soften. Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida on Tuesday eased his opposition to new energy exploration off the coast.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering legislation that would permit new offshore drilling as part of a broad energy bill, a response to growing anxiety within her party that Republicans are gaining traction with election-year attacks that Democrats aren't doing enough to address high gasoline prices.

A bid to relax the long-standing moratorium on new offshore oil drilling died Thursday in the Senate as an energy bill became bogged down by fights that underscored the regional nature of energy politics. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) failed in his attempt to open the door to natural gas exploration off the Virginia coast. Five of Warner's fellow Republicans, all from coastal states, joined 37 Democrats and two independents in opposing the effort.

A new drive to relax the long-standing ban on offshore energy exploration came up short in the House of Representatives on Thursday. By a 217-203 vote, a bipartisan coalition of coastal-state lawmakers beat back an effort to exempt drilling for natural gas from the congressional moratorium. But the vote -- closer than last year's 262-157 roll call on a similar measure -- reflected the heightened political anxiety over high energy prices in this election year.

A Chinese company's gambit to drill for oil in U.S. territory demonstrates China's determination to lock up the raw materials it needs to sustain its rapid growth, wherever those resources lie. The state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC, reportedly is negotiating the purchase of leases owned by the Norwegian StatoilHydro in U.S. waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the source of about a quarter of U.S. crude oil production. China's push to enter U.S. turf comes four years after CNOOC's $18.5-billion bid to buy Unocal Corp.

As Congress moves toward opening protected Alaskan wilderness to petroleum drilling, energy company activity is picking up in California's coastal waters, where new exploration has been blocked for more than two decades. Drillers are reworking wells and considering reviving old platforms in places where exploration is allowed.

Jittery about political fallout from high gasoline prices, the Senate advanced a measure Tuesday that would allow a survey of offshore oil and gas resources, overriding the objections of coastal-state lawmakers. The critics warned that the survey could prove the first step toward overturning the decades-old moratorium on new drilling in most U.S. coastal waters. Today, the Senate is likely to reject an effort to establish a mandatory program to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to repay $1.1 billion to oil and gas companies that have long held dozens of leases off the California coast but faced repeated delays in developing them into working undersea oil fields. The decision, released Thursday by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., represents a significant step toward resolving the fate of the 36 undeveloped tracts off Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

Using a giant straw to suck samples from beneath the ocean floor, oceanographers have found a thriving microbial zoo living deep within the ocean crust. Fluid collected from below the surface was chemically distinct from seawater and contained a variety of microbes, said University of Hawaii oceanographer James P. Cowen. The ecosystem has not been studied before because of the difficulty of reaching ocean crust fluids.