To the West, drilling rigs also operate off the Pacific shoreline near Santa Barbara, but to many residents, they are vile reminders of a 1969 blowout on an offshore rig that spewed a giant oil slick into the Pacific. That ecological disaster contributed to the creation of Earth Day the following year.

"You don't see oil on the beach any more, but it's very high in people's awareness and their concern about any more development," says Linda Krop, an environmental attorney in Santa Barbara.

The experiences in California and the Gulf Coast states offer contrasting case studies as $4-a-gallon gasoline accelerates calls for vastly expanded offshore drilling to boost U.S. oil and gas supplies.

Offshore drilling is permitted off four Gulf Coast states, Alaska and a sliver of California but is banned elsewhere in the United States.

President Bush and presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain reopened the national debate over offshore drilling last week by calling on Congress to lift the ban that prohibits new oil and gas production off most of the East and West coasts and a section of the Gulf Coast below Florida.

The proposals generated a fierce push-back from many Democrats and environmental groups, who accused Bush and McCain of being in the pockets of Big Oil.

McCain's rival, Sen. Barack Obama, noted Friday in Jacksonville that McCain had once favored the ban and charged McCain with violating the "bipartisan consensus" that had protected Florida's coastline for decades.

"The politics may have changed, but the facts haven't," Obama said. "Offshore drilling would not lower gas prices today, it would not lower gas prices next year, and it would not lower gas prices five years from now."

Although continued reliance on fossil fuel is increasingly in disfavor because of global warming, there are signs that Americans are becoming more receptive to increased oil and gas production in the United States as gasoline prices rise. A majority of Americans – 57 percent – favor offshore exploration in now-prohibited areas to reduce gas prices, according to a Gallup Poll.

One prominent change of heart came from Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who abandoned support for the ban to advocate exploration off Florida's coastline. The Republican governor has been mentioned as a possible McCain running mate.

"Floridians are suffering," Crist said. "When you're paying over $4 a gallon for gas, you have to wonder whether there might be additional resources to bring that price down."

Floridians have strongly opposed opening Gulf Coast waters to the oil industry, fearing offshore drilling could hurt the state's beaches and $65 billion-a-year tourism industry. But gasoline costs are having an impact on public sentiment.

Larry White, the executive director of the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau on Florida's Gulf Coast, said the area depends on its pristine beaches but is also affected by rising gas prices. He said 70 percent of the area's tourists drive to the Bradenton area – many of them from Texas.

"I want to protect my beaches," he said. "But if we don't get some relief they're going to say, " 'I can't afford to come.' "

Offshore drilling has long been permitted off the other Gulf Coast states – Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

At least 120 companies are operating off the four Gulf Coast states that permit offshore drilling, producing roughly 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, about 25 percent of the U.S. domestic production. More than 3,900 platforms are scattered across Gulf Coast waters.

Most of the activity is centered off Texas and Louisiana, two of the nation's oil-producing giants, each with a rich history of offshore exploration. Consequently, the prospect of increasing offshore production has wide acceptance among those states' political leaders and rank-and-file citizens.

Offshore wells started sprouting off the two state's shorelines in the 1930s and 1940s, producing generations of workers and oil explorers.

Robert Gramling, a professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and an expert in offshore production, said many workers come from other states since a standard shift is two weeks on and two weeks off.

"We've got 60 years of gradual ramping up of this industry," he said. "There is nobody in business who doesn't know somebody who works offshore or has worked offshore."

Offshore drilling has occurred over several decades around Alaska's vast coast, including Cook Inlet near Anchorage, Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska, and the forbidding Beaufort and Chukchi seas at the top of the state.

For the most part, Alaska's oil is produced on land rather than offshore.

However, government geologists believe remote waters such as the Chukchi Sea, which spans between Alaska and Russia, could hold billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.

Oil companies led by Shell spent a staggering $2.7 billion for Chukchi Sea acreage at a federal lease sale in February.

Twenty-two older drilling platforms that began operating before the U.S ban was imposed in 1990 still remain in production off the California coastline.