Florida Senate moves forward with Offshore Drilling

By Keith Laing
The News Service of Florida

Despite the Senate’s seeming reluctance to lift a 20-year ban on offshore oil drilling in Florida waters, the first legislation on the subject was filed in the upper chamber.

Meanwhile, House leaders said Monday that they would not be deterred by a report last week that found that drilling in Florida waters would “have no discernible impact” on gas prices or the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, even if it would pump millions into state coffers.

The Senate bill (SB 2622), sponsored by Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, would allow the Cabinet to approve licenses for drilling off Florida’s Gulf coast no closer than three miles off shore for $1 million. The House doesn’t yet have a bill, but the chairman of House panel exploring the proposal, Rep. Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, said the panel would likely have a bill of its own mid-session.

Cannon did not say what distance from the coastline the House was considering for allowing new drilling, but he did yield Monday on the eve of the 2010 legislative session to concerns about the impact that rigs might have on the engine of Florida’s economy: tourism.

“One of the ideas that I’ve heard that I think makes a lot of sense is protecting the view-scape from the coast,” Cannon told reporters after his House Select Policy Council on Strategic & Economic Planning. “Whatever prohibitions or restrictions need to be imposed to make sure that there’s no visual blight or any permanent structures visible from the beach, that’s a theme I think there’s a general consensus on. No decision has been made about any specific policy, but I would expect that to be in the final product.”

One of the requirements to obtain a drilling license in the Senate bill is “documentation stating that all equipment or structures above the surface of the water and related to the development and production of oil and gas within the territorial waters of the state shall be situated no closer than three miles from the coast as calculated from the line of mean high tide.”

However, Cannon said the House may set a barrier farther than that.

“It may be five (miles), it may need to be more than that,” he said. “One of the things that we’re going to look at as the council meets is, What are the different ways you can ensure that you can’t see it from the beach? If it turns out to be five miles, that’s fine. It may need to be farther. There may be other ways to achieve that same goal.”

Having heard presentations Monday from a group that responds to oil spills that said that even the heavy hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 did not produce massive oil spills and from a group that manages marine resources in a portion of the Gulf Coast where drilling is allowed that said the two could co-exist, Cannon said the Century Commission’s report late last week alone would not stall the drilling effort. The commission found that drilling might bring in money for the state, but wouldn’t meet the main stated policy goal – lowering gas prices.

“Those aren’t conclusions, those are opinions,” Cannon said. “One of the things we were careful to do is start with the Florida state geologists, who said there is oil and natural gas down there. We don’t know how much. Then we heard from the seismologist who said until you go look, no one really knows. Part of the approach that I think we’re taking is nobody can tell you exactly what is down there. We know there’s some down there, because it’s come up before.

“Part of what we’re going to try to do is balance up those interests and make sure that we set up a framework that will allow for success whether there are few resources or great resources,” he continued.

Cannon said the presentations the committee heard Monday from the Marine Spill Response Corporation and National Ocean Service’s Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary gave him hope drilling could be allowed without harming the environment.

“With a proper regulatory framework, those things can co-exist,” Cannon said.

The Senate bill was filed late Friday and was awaiting committee assignments.