The Battle of the Atlantic

NOW that the dollar is being devalued, anybody who drives a car or heats his house with oil may well face higher fuel bills. Reason: world oil prices are generally set in dollars, and the increasingly militant oil-producing countries will press even harder for more dollars to make up for devaluation.

As foreign oil becomes costlier, U.S. oil companies will step up their search for domestic sources. Already they are moving their derricks farther and farther offshore to tap deposits under the ocean floor. One of the hottest exploration areas stretches along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to North Carolina, ranging from 50 miles to 300 miles offshore. Oilmen estimate that that area of the continental shelf may hold between 122 billion and 169 billion bbl. in potential petroleum resources--roughly 25 to 30 times as much as the U.S. consumes yearly. But a classic battle is shaping up between oilmen and environmentalists over whether to develop this possible resource.

Great Search. For six years, a consortium of 33 companies--headed by Humble Oil, a Jersey Standard affiliate, and including such giants as Atlantic Richfield, Getty, Mobil and Texaco --have poked and probed the continental shelf in hopes of a big discovery. Recently oil and gas were discovered off Sable Island, Nova Scotia, and hopes soared. Geologists concluded that the find was probably part of a pool extending southward to North Carolina, and oilmen accelerated the Atlantic search. Most promising sites so far: Georges Bank Trough off Massachusetts, Baltimore Canyon Trough off the Middle Atlantic states and Blake Plateau off Florida. As Geologist Wilson Laird, the consortium's spokesman, told TIME Correspondent Christopher Byron: "We won't know if there is a single drop of oil until we actually drill for it. But based on the topographical configurations that we have found and the nature of the sediments, we are extremely optimistic."

They may never get a chance to drill. Bills have been put forward in both the House and the Senate to declare the East Coast offshore area a marine preserve and tightly regulate oil and mineral exploration. Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy is one of the sponsors of the Senate bill; Maryland Congressman Edward A. Garmatz, powerful chairman of the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, is co-sponsoring the House bill, which was introduced by Long Island Congressman Norman Lent.

After an acerbic debate with Kennedy in December, Interior Secretary Rogers Morton promised that no drilling would be allowed for at least two more years. Under law, Interior must make a study of the environmental consequences of the drilling. Invoking that law in another case, the Sierra Club and other conservation groups two weeks ago went to federal court in Washington, D.C., and stalled the leasing of drilling rights for 366,000 acres off the Louisiana coast. In what could be a move to placate environmentalists and meet consumer demand for more oil, especially in New England, President Nixon last week lifted the quota on foreign oil in states east of the Rocky Mountains by 100,000 bbl. a day, to 1,550,000 bbl.

Environmentalists argue that oil drilling in the Atlantic could shatter the marine ecology and ruin resort areas, particularly around Long Island and New Jersey. They point ominously to three disastrous oil leaks in recent years, two off Louisiana and one in California's Santa Barbara Channel, which fouled beaches and killed wildlife. In rebuttal, oilmen argue that their record is good: only three major spills from more than 14,000 offshore drilling operations. To that, environmentalists reply that there are countless unreported small leaks that together pump far more pollution into the sea than the big spills do.

Energy Policy. Beyond the environmental fight loom arguments over international law, politics and economics. Americans use 5 billion bbl. of oil a year, and the industry estimates that domestic demand will double by 1985. But proven U.S. reserves--chiefly in Texas, Louisiana and Alaska --are only 39 billion bbl. Oilmen insist that unless great new domestic deposits are found and exploited, the U.S. will become dangerously dependent on the politically mercurial oil-producing countries of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Further, big oil discoveries in the U.S. Northeast would sharply cut the costs of transporting oil to those Americans who use most of it.

President Nixon has directed the Interior Department to speed up issuing drilling leases to enlarge the nation's known oil pool. But there is a legal complication: in 1970 the President committed the U.S. to pursuing a treaty in which nations would renounce sovereignty over resources more than 200 meters below the sea's surface. Much of the Atlantic shelf oil is thought to lie below that point, and an embarrassing legal question could arise over whether the U.S. controls it.

The hassle over Atlantic oil will carry on in Congress through much of next year. The fight will be resolved only after the nation starts a long-overdue debate on energy policy. The U.S. must decide how much it is willing to pay for oil in terms of money, environmental risk and dependence on foreign governments.

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