The driller killers.

• Author: Hiesler, Kevin
• Position: Political debate over the offshore drilling in North Carolina

Gov. Jim Martin promises that his July Fourth "Salute to the Troops" celebration will be the mother of all patriotic bashes. The party - with ringing bells, waving flags, marching bands and maybe even Whitney Houston and Norman Schwarzkopf - will honor North Carolina troops who served in the Persian Gulf. And who deserves a bigger party? President Bush sent 75,000 military men and women from North Carolina to liberate Kuwait - more than from any other state.

But when the hoopla dies down, troubling questions remain. If we're willing to spill American blood to keep oil flowing, why won't we allow Mobil Corp. to drill off the North Carolina coast? Do the environmental risks of natural-gas and oil exploration outweigh the blood shed in war?

Republicans Bush and Martin part company when answering those questions. They agree on the need for domestic exploration for oil and gas, the centerpiece of Bush's energy policy. But the governor doesn't want North Carolina to be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of energy independence. With help from Congress, he has blocked Mobil from drilling an exploratory well off the Outer Banks.

Mobil bought a $300 million lease from the federal government in the late 70s because 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - potentially the largest find in U.S. history - might lie 45 miles northeast of Cape Hatteras. In September 1988, when Mobil proposed an exploration plan, Martin was neutral. He said more environmental information was needed and threatened to sue the federal government if he didn't get it.

So the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore oil and gas leasing, began the biggest environmental-impact study ever conducted on offshore drilling.

In September 1989, Mobil submitted an unprecedented, 1,500-page exploration plan for the state to review. Nine months later, the Minerals Management Service study - a 13-pound, 2,200-page report -arrived on the governor's doorstep.

Then Bush blind-sided Martin. Last june, the president declared a 10-year moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration almost everywhere in the nation - except North Carolina.

"I had been operating under the personal evaluation that the United States needed more energy resources to prevent dependency on foreign oil and natural gas," Martin says. "Intellectually my position is that offshore drilling is acceptable if it's operated in a way that's environmentally sound. My presumption was disrupted when the...