Offshore revenue fight is front-and-center for climate swing votes

The simmering battle over offshore oil-and-gas revenue sharing that we wrote about earlier on Monday is a big deal to a key subset of lawmakers: Swing votes on a climate change and energy bill.

(To recap, there’s a fight underway between several inland and coastal senators, who are at odds over whether the upcoming Senate climate and energy bill should provide states with drilling in federal waters off their shores a big share of the revenue.)

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) – who is a fence-sitter on climate legislation – supports drilling off Virginia’s coast, but along with colleague Mark Warner (D-Va.) has repeatedly called for revenue sharing akin to what’s already provided for several Gulf of Mexico states.

Here’s what Webb said when the White House announced plans in late March to proceed with a lease sale off Virginia’s coast:

“This policy should be coupled with a fair and equitable formula for profit-sharing between the federal and state government in order to attract well-paying jobs to the Commonwealth and support a range of projects, from clean energy development to transportation infrastructure to coastal restoration.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), another swing vote, wants revenue sharing badly, and her Alaska colleague Mark Begich (D) supports it too.

But on the other hand, Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) , who along with Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) are leading the charge against revenue sharing, are climate swing votes themselves. So stay tuned.