Jul 6

　　Last month, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow immediate drilling in areas between 100 and 200 miles from shore, and would give coastal states the authority to permit drilling closer to land. To encourage them to do so, the bill also awards states a much bigger share of the royalties from offshore oil and gas production, most of which currently go to the federal government. The Senate must now consider the bill, along with another, more modest, measure to allow drilling in a hitherto unexploited area of the Gulf of Mexico.

　　Roughly 30% of the oil America produces, and 20% of the gas, comes from offshore fields, most of them along the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. The government suspects that a higher proportion of the oil and gas yet to be discovered will be found offshore, since prospectors have probed the dry land pretty thoroughly. The lion's share is thought to lie in the areas already open to exploration. But the rest of the seabed may still contain as much as 19 billion barrels of oil and 86 trillion cubic feet of gas—enough to keep America going for a few years.