When something like an offshore drilling station is located within that boundary of a state, that's 100 percent of royalties that state receives, ... The way it's written up right now is just not fair to states like Louisiana.

What gets me is here Katrina comes along and it breaks up all the offshore drilling rigs, and all of the sudden, before the gas in the East Texas area can reach us, we're already paying the increased prices,

our royalties ? could be as high as 10 percent of total system prices.

Shoot, I must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life as a normal, independent American up there in the Last Frontier, schooled with only public education and a lowly state university degree, because obviously I haven't learned enough to dismiss common sense.

The odds of letting states opt out of coastal moratorium in return for a share of offshore royalties are much higher. There is sufficient momentum behind this idea that it is going to take more than objections from Florida to stop it.

The real issue is offshore production.