Domenici (R-NM) Pushing Oil Drilling Off Florida - ENS

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON, DC, December 16, 2004 (ENS) - "Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has revived a push for offshore gas drilling in Florida. In a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton last week, Domenici and two other members of the committee, claimed that drilling off Florida’s coast iss necessary to reduce natural gas prices and protect American jobs.

Every few years, offshore drilling proposals are made, and so far they have been defeated. Environmentalists and businesses worry that spills or pollution would harm the state's waters and beaches - and its multi-billion dollar tourism industry. “These are the same false promises we’ve heard a thousand times before,” said Manley Fuller, president of the Florida Wildlife Federation. “Now as ever, threatening Florida’s beaches with pollution is the wrong way to meet America’s energy needs.”

Offshore drilling, which has fouled beaches in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, has often been proposed for Florida. In 1999, Chevron has asked then U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley to open oil leases, but the oil interests did not prevail.

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Domenici’s renewed drive for drilling the outer continental shelf, including the Gulf of Mexico near Florida, comes a few weeks after the renewal of the Republican proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling."

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[aquart]

1. giggle

[whistle]

2. He needs to stick to the business of New Mexico and keep...

...his republican nose out of affairs that affect Florida. His state is not exactly ringing up big economic points for anything at the moment is it?