Vote upcoming on offshore drilling

Small business owners are lobbying for more drilling.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Strangers from the heartland, two businessmen share the hope that the energy resting beneath the deep blue waters of the central Gulf of Mexico might bring relief from high natural gas prices.
So, they wonder, why isn't it being pumped?
The Senate was expected to vote today on whether to expand oil and gas drilling to 8.3 million acres of Gulf waters off-limits to energy development for a quarter-century. The House has passed a broader bill dealing with offshore drilling.
Watching the developments closely are Tony Raimondo, owner of a metal fabricating company in Columbus, Neb., and Jay Bender, who runs a plastics plant in Brookings, S.D.
While they do not know each other, they have a common problem. Natural gas prices have soared and their companies are feeling the pain. These men believe the answer is more production, including in the restricted coastal waters.
"We're the only industrialized country that is not actively pursuing more natural gas resources. It makes no sense to me," Bender said in a telephone interview.
Bender, Raimondo and hundreds of business owners, in letters to members of Congress, have urged an end to the freeze that has barred oil and gas drilling off 85 percent of the country's coast. Lobbying powerhouses such as the Washington-based National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Chemistry Council have led the drive.
Soaring costs
For the first time in a decade, Bender says, he has been forced to raise the price of the plastic components his plant molds into parts for such things as electronic scoreboards, medical equipment and printer cartridges. The cost of the raw plastic pellets has doubled in the past two years because those pellets are made of natural gas and oil.
Heating the warehouses by gas, Bender says, "costs two or three times what it did three years ago."
At his four metal fabricating plants, Raimondo's annual cost for natural gas has gone from $530,000 in 2000 to nearly $1.3 million -- an expense that is hurting his business.
Costing about $2 per thousand cubic feet only a few years ago, natural gas soared to as high as $15 late last year. This spring and summer it retreated to below $6, but has risen in the past month because of greater demand for air conditioning brought on by the intense heat across the United States.
The natural gas bill for chemical companies has jumped from $7.5 billion in 1999 to $30 billion last year, and some companies are expanding overseas where gas is cheaper, says Jack Gerard, president of the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade group.
Other energy-intensive business sectors including forest and paper, pesticide, aluminum and makers of carpets, bedding and furniture are being hit hard, he says.
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