Offshore Drilling Plan in Florida

The two-million-acre area, in deep waters 100 miles south of Pensacola, Fla., is estimated to contain nearly half a billion barrels of oil and three trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to run roughly a million vehicles and heat more than half a million homes for about 15 years. The site, Area 181, is the only major offshore leasing zone that the administration is offering for development.

But lawmakers are divided over competing proposals to expand or to limit the drilling. The Senate Energy Committee and its chairman, Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, are pushing for a wider drilling zone, while the two Florida senators and many from the state's delegation in the House are arguing for a smaller tract. Other lawmakers oppose any new drilling at all.

The debate could go a long way toward defining how the nation satisfies its need for new energy and whether longstanding prohibitions against drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, the deep waters well beyond state coastlines, will end.

Isn't it time to develop some new energy sources?