U.S. Representative Frank LoBiondo recognizes the risks inherent in offshore drilling for oil. That’ important, given the alarming frequency with which drilling-related oil spills are taking place around the world. Unfortunately, Congressman LoBiondo only seems to recognize the risks of expanded offshore drilling when they take place in his own neck of the woods.

Last year, LoBiondo voted in favor of H.R. 6899, the ironically-entitled Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act (the legislation helped to promote risky sources of energy from which American consumers need protection). That legislation effectively lifted the moratorium on offshore drilling for oil in American waters.

This year, however, LoBiondo is the primary sponsor of H.R. 2439, a bill that would forbid new offshore drilling for oil – but only in the waters belonging to LoBiondo’s home state of New Jersey.

LoBiondo’s new bill has only three cosponsors – and guess where they’re all from. That’s right – New Jersey. Representatives Rodney Frelinghuysen, Leonard Lance and Christopher Smith are the cosponsors of LoBiondo’s not-in-my-backyard anti-drilling bill. Only one of these members of Congress, Frelinghuysen, had the intelligence and integrity to oppose the repeal of the offshore drilling moratorium last year. Leonard Lance was not in Congress last year, but said that he favored the oil industry request to remove the national moratorium on new drilling and leave individual states to fend for themselves.

With H.R. 2439, Representative LoBiondo and his colleagues have fallen prey to a cynical divide-and-conquer strategy devised by lobbyists for big oil companies. First, these lobbyists convinced members of Congress to vote in favor of expanded offshore drilling – but with the idea that Representatives could create special protections for their own states, letting other states take all the risks. Now that the barriers to new drilling have been taken down, members of state delegations to the House of Representatives have put together legislation that would ban offshore drilling, but only in their own states. Each little state-based coalition lacks the votes it needs for its own bill, with a state-against-state dynamic, and so the coastline in every state remains vulnerable the oil spills that inevitably come as a result of increased drilling.

That’s a great situation for the big oil companies. It’s a rotten predicament for the American shores and the people who care about them.