861 



AMENDMENT OFFERED BY MR. DU PONT 



Mr. DU Pont. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. 

 The Clerk read as follows : 



Amendment offered by Mr. du Pont : On page 23 delete lines 3 through and 

 including line 10. 



Renumber the following sections accordingly. 



(Mr. DU Pont asked and was given permission to revise and extend 

 his remarks. ) 



Mr. DU Pont. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is very straightfor- 

 ward. If we refer to page 23 of the bill, it simply strikes all of section 

 15. The existing law requires laws already in place and passed by 

 coastal States to be fully complied with whenever a permit or a license 

 is granted by the Federal Government to perform offshore drilling. 

 That is the law the way it is today. 



The committee added to that in our drafting sessions the word 

 "lease," and that would bring the leasing of offshore oil sections within 

 this same framework. Since we wrote that section and passed it in 

 committee, we have had some comments both from industry and from 

 the administration, and from other groups, that they are not quite 

 clear as to what effect that would really have on offshore oil tract 

 leasing procedures. 



My amendment is offered to strike that section not because I dis- 

 agree with having leases included. As a matter of fact I feel very 

 strongly that leases should be included, but the language is also in 

 the Senate bill, and because of the confusion that has arisen over the 

 effect this would have, we frankly Avould like a little bit more time to 

 come to an understanding of exactly what we are doing here. By 

 striking it in the House bill and leaving it in the bill that has already 

 passed the Senate we will be giving ourselves a little bit of flexibility 

 in the conference to either adopt the language as the Senate put it in 

 or adopt some other language we feel would be more beneficial and at 

 the same time protect the rights of the States. 



So the purpose of this amendment is not to get rid of the word 

 "lease" but to allow us time to work on the problem a little bit longer. 



Mr. ]MuRPiiY of New York. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will 

 yield, as we know, the provisions of the act require the license or per- 

 mit, so within the Federal consistency requirement provisions, we 

 have that. Therefore, even if an organization had a lease it could not 

 do much with it because the licenses and permits are required to deal 

 with the development of oil on the Continental Shelf. Many attorneys 

 feel that "lease" is redundant and that the lease is included in license 

 or permit. 



I agree with the gentleman from Delaware that we should make this 

 a subject for the conference and I accept the amendment offered by 

 the gentleman. 



[Mr. Studds addressed the Committee. His remarks will appear 

 hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.] 



The Chairman. The question is on the amendment offered by the 

 gentleman from Delaware (Mr. du Pont). 



The amendment was agreed to. 



