Richard Pombo News

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has teamed up with an environmental group that endorsed the governor's intention to block Rep. Richard Pombo's offshore oil-drilling legislation. Schwarzenegger blasted Pombo's bill in a conference call on July 24 with reporters organized by the Sierra Club. Pombo says he wants to shift power to grant drilling licenses from the federal government to the states, in part because Congress is under increasing pressure to do something about energy prices; it only narrowly re-approved a decades-long drilling moratorium earlier this year. He said doing this would effectively ban drilling in California forever, while giving other states the chance to open their coasts.

America's thirst for energy and high fuel prices after hurricanes Katrina and Rita have rekindled the fight over oil and gas drilling off Florida, where clean beaches are the bedrock of a $57 billion-a-year tourism industry. Environmentalists say they are girding for battle as pump prices of $3 a gallon soften longstanding support for bans on offshore drilling, once sacred to Florida politicians and the state's 17 million people. With Washington pressing for new domestic oil and gas sources to ease U.S. dependence on foreign energy, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, long sought by oil companies, has risen to the top of the national agenda again.