A few days before thousands of people are expected to fill the Biloxi Coliseum to preserve barrier island parks from offshore drilling, Barbour and Lott react to the heat.
Lott says he will prohibit drilling near the barrier islands but he wants to conduct seismic tests. He describes a coalition that includes Barbour's banker buddies and transition team members as well as environmentalists as "ridiculous" and the rally as something that does not intimidate.
Later that day, Barbour bends.
Lott in the am.
U.S. Sen. Trent Lott said Wednesday that the best way he can help resolve the offshore drilling issue for the Coast "is to just keep my mouth shut and get the job done."
"I think we can have our cake and eat it too," said Lott. "We can preserve our pristine coastline."
Lott said there is not going to be any drilling in the Mississippi Sound. "They are not going to drill off the coast of the Gulf Island National Seashore," he said. "I was there at the very beginning" of the Seashore's creation. "I'm not going to let that happen."
Lott called actions by the 12 Miles South Coalition "ridiculous." He said he would not attend a coalition rally this weekend.
"Frankly I don't think that kind of thing does any good," he said. "It doesn't influence me and and it doesn't intimidate me. I don't like the way this has been handled, and I have some sympathies for what they are trying to do. The difference is that I am going to try to get it done. I won't make a fuss about it."
Lott said he has talked with Gov. Haley Barbour and U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran about the issue of drilling for oil and gas on the islands and just off the islands. "This was a little bit of a funny deal," he said. "Rarely do they do things on the Coast without talking to me. I think they didn't want to talk to me.
"I warned Haley and Thad and others that we are different on the Coast. You need to understand that we have a little different view of the world."
Lott spoke out for seismic testing. "Let's draw circles around areas where deposits are and do it in the least intrusive way. The one area where we might have some depositories is near the Alabama line, hardly visible from Pascagoula."
He called for more information and planning to see if there are any gas and oil deposits. "We may find that we don't have anything."
Barbour in the pm.
Gov. Haley Barbour on Thursday offered some olive branches to opponents of offshore drilling, including a study that would, at the very least, slow the process and allow more public input.
He also made clear that the Mississippi Development Authority, which answers to him, won't allow any state-waters oil drilling - only natural gas, which requires less obtrusive equipment.
In addition, he said there will be no seismic testing on the barrier islands, although testing would be allowed within the one-mile buffer around them.
"The coalition considers this a step in the right direction," said Robert "Bones" Barq, spokesman for the Twelve Miles South Coalition, a group trying to halt drilling in state or nearby federal water.
"We are confident the study will support what everybody on the Coast already knows, that this is a bad idea.
The bottom line is, we still want the governor's support for a 12-miles-south prohibition."
Barbour, at a press conference, shared a letter he sent to the Department of Marine Resources, asking the agency to conduct a study on whether drilling would cause any environmental or other problems.
Opponents of drilling have asked for such a study. Barbour said MDA will await the study before making any decisions on rules for gas exploration and leasing. He asked for the study to be completed by November, but said MDA would wait if it required more time.
But Barbour stopped far short of supporting the opposition group's main goal - a moratorium on any drilling within 12 miles of the Gulf Islands National Seashore.
This moratorium would extend well beyond the state-owned three-mile strip south of the islands and into federal waters, where there are already numerous drilling rigs and more planned.
Barbour said he won't attend a Twelve Miles South rally on the Coast this weekend, and when asked about the group, which has bashed him often, said only, "There's obviously a lot of politics involved in this."
People, people power works. Stay tuned for more developments.