Republicans’ Calls for Offshore Drilling Have Grown Quieter

By CARL HULSE
NYT

WASHINGTON — Two years ago, feisty Republicans commandeered the darkened House chamber during the summer recess to loudly demand that oil companies be allowed to “drill here and drill now.”

Now, with an ominous oil slick threatening the Gulf Coast from a deep-well blowout, Republican cries for more offshore oil production have grown quieter. But they have not ceased.

“The American people want to see our country develop our domestic resources in an environmentally responsible way, and they know we can,” Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 House Republican and a ringleader of the 2008 uprising on the House floor, said Thursday.

It was a notable Republican triumph. With gas prices hitting $4 per gallon, House Republicans were able to pressure the Democratic majority in Congress to relent on a coastal drilling ban that had been routinely enacted every year since the early 1980s. But the BP spill has made the politics of oil much more slippery for Republicans, and they are treading carefully.

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