(CNSNews.com) – On Sept. 30, a congressional ban on offshore drilling expires, and the government can start issuing leases to oil companies to start new drilling.
 
In anticipation of that deadline, House Democrats – with the help of a few Republicans -- passed a bill this week that could reinstate the ban in many areas but also allow some new drilling albeit with many restrictions – those excessive regulations, many Republicans say, would effectively make new drilling impossible.
 
In addition, the bill includes billions of dollars in alternative energy-related earmarks and tax hikes for energy companies.
 
If the American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act – which passed the House by a margin of 263-189 on Tuesday, becomes law – it would replace the annual congressional ban on most offshore drilling which originated in Congress in 1982.
 
The latest bill has to pass in the Senate and be signed by the president to become law. In Tuesday’s vote in the House, 221 Democrats and 15 Republicans voted yes, while 176 Republicans and 13 Democrats voted no.
 
The new bill would institute a ban on all drilling within 100 miles of the United States unless the state bordering the water chose to “opt-in” and allow drilling between the 50- and 100-mile markers.
 
The bill bans all drilling within 50 miles of the U.S. coast.
 
In addition, the bill retains a ban in parts of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico until 2022, bans any drilling within 125 miles of the Florida coastline, and permanently blocks drilling in all national marine monuments and national marine sanctuaries.
 
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope hailed the legislation on Tuesday as a bill that restores oil drilling in the United States. Pope also harshly criticized Republicans, the majority of whom voted against the bill.
 
“Despite significant offshore drilling provisions in the bill, an overwhelming number of House Republicans attempted to reject the bill, complaining that it did not go far enough to help oil companies—fortunately, they failed,” said Pope in a statement sent to CNSNews.com.
 
Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources –
whose office wrote the bill – also said the legislation was designed to repeal the moratorium.
 
“Under the measure, the congressional moratorium that has been in place since 1982 on offshore oil and gas leasing in federal waters, with the exception of portions of the Gulf of Mexico, will be no more,” said Rahall in a statement.
 
Republicans and conservative experts, however, noted that the bill opens the door for litigation, e.g., if a state plans to allow new offshore drilling, environmentalists or other groups could easily challenge the plan and tie the matter up in court for years, effectively killing it.
 
Further, because the bulk of unrecovered oil is estimated to be within 50 miles off of most U.S. coasts, many experts say the bill is “a hoax.”
 
“Most of the oil is within 50 miles, and even beyond that you are just not going to get increased energy production,” Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, told CNSNews.com.
 
“The Democrats played political theater, and they played it well, but voters, consumers, and Americans have been hurt in the process because of it,” said Burnett.
 
But Rahall said in his statement that this is not the case.
 
“We are opening up to 400 million acres off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling, and expanding the availability of oil by at least 2 billion barrels,” Rahall said. “We have done so in a balanced, reasonable and responsible manner."
 
Republicans and conservatives noted that the bill would impose $18 billion in taxes on the largest oil companies. That tax money would go to fund tax breaks for alternative energy, such as solar, wind, and biomass, and to numerous earmarks such as a $1.7 billion mass transit system in New York City.
 
“This [big oil] is where the Democrats come back to when they need to pay for big spending bills,” Andy Roth, director of government affairs at the conservative Club for Growth, told CNSNews.com. “There isn’t anything pro-growth about this bill. Taxes on corporations flow through to the consumers who will end up paying more for gas.”
 
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement Tuesday that the bill should be viewed as a tax cut for the American people.
 
“At the heart of this legislation is an enormous tax cut for clean, renewable American energy, to help an industry -- that will create millions of new jobs -- get up and running,” said Pelosi. 
 
Republicans have also complained about how the bill was pushed through the House. The 282-page document, which was written by Democrats, was made available at 10PM on Tuesday and scheduled by the Democratic leadership, who control the House’s schedule, as the first vote of the day for Wednesday morning. The bill was also subject to a closed rule, which made it immune to most amendments.
 
President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, and it is likely that it will not pass in the Senate, whose rules tend to favor the minority party, the Republicans.
 
In July, President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling that was put into place by his father, President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and sustained by President Bill Clinton.