In June 1990, 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.

Bush's directive expanded a moratorium Congress imposed in 1982 that removed 736,000 acres off the coast of northern and central California from leasing for oil and gas exploration and production. The concern for possible environmental damage and social disruption caused by both routine activities and accidents, such as oil spills, resulted in local pressure to prevent these possibilities by removing areas from the lease schedule. In 1998, President Clinton extended Bush's Executive Order until June 2012.
Moratorium on Offshore Drilling (1990)

The enviromental reasons given were from a spill in "69".....we've come a long way since then as PROVEN with Katrina.

Have a good one!:s4: