Political front offers little hope for greater E and D activity

Little on the U.S. political front holds out hope for a strong boost in exploration and development activity. This paper reports that most imminent government assistance to U.S. E and D focuses on improving recovery rates of oil fields and forestalling abandonments of marginal wells. Efforts to open remaining exploratory frontiers to leasing and drilling - essential to any significant slowing of the long term U.S. oil production decline - continue to fail. In the past year, prospects for improved access to the best prospects on federal land have worsened. Congress is poised to approve major energy legislation for the first time in a decade, but it will do little to spur U.S. petroleum exploration and development. Both houses have passed omnibus energy bills by overwhelming margins, and assuming no new problems develop, this summer a House-Senate conference committee should be able to merge the bills into a version acceptable to President George Bush