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Pelosi Says Probe Will Affect Drilling Decisions

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that Congress will weigh the findings of an ongoing federal probe into the causes of last week’s deadly oil rig explosion that spilled massive amounts of fuel into the Gulf of Mexico when determining whether to allow drilling in new areas off the U.S. coast.

Last month, President Barack Obama announced plans to allow new leases off the coast of some mid-Atlantic states and in certain portions of the Gulf of Mexico.

“That’s subject to review, and I think as we extend our concern to those who lost their lives and also look at the danger to the coastline that we see, that all of that has to be taken into consideration as we review the plan that the president put forth,” Pelosi told reporters during her weekly press conference.

“Any of these decisions should be subjected to careful review. … I think the people who were affected in the area would want there to be a careful review,” she added

Pelosi said she favors a broad moratorium along the lines of the one that existed prior to 2008, when Congress allowed a ban on offshore drilling that had been in place for two decades to lapse.

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