Lawmakers look for oil drilling compromise

WASHINGTON, July 17 (UPI) -- Lawmakers in Washington are pushing to forge a compromise bill that would allow for expanded U.S. oil drilling rights, sources said.

At odds are mostly Republican advocates of opening the outer U.S. continental shelf and parts of northern Alaska to drilling and Democrats who oppose sacrificing hard-won environmental legislation, CNN reported.

Bipartisan groups from the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are meeting, sometimes in closed session, to see if they can find middle ground.

A compromise could include new laws to curb speculative oil investments or increased dollars spent on alternative energy sources, CNN said.

Republican senators may choose to withdraw support for a Democratic-sponsored bill aimed at controlling commodity speculators in return for votes to expand drilling rights, the report said.

"This is the issue of the year. This is the issue of the decade," said Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., who helped form a bipartisan study group in the House.

"Locking up offshore is the dumbest thing that we ever did," he said.