President George H. W. Bush responded to concerns about preserving the ocean and coastal environment with a directive ordering the Department of Interior not to conduct leasing or preleasing activity in places other than the Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and

limited parts of Alaska offshore until 2000. The moratorium affected virtually all of the coasts of the North Atlantic, California, Washington, Oregon, New England, Mid-Atlantic and the Northern Aleutian Basin. It also included the Eastern Gulf of Mexico

off the coast of Southwest Florida, an area extending 700 miles from Baldwin County, Alabama, southward to the Florida Keys. http://tinyurl.com/38cx8s