KEY WEST — Simon and Mimi Stafford decorated their truck with oil cans, fishing nets and "dead" plastic animals and joined 1,000 other residents to protest plans for oil drilling off the Florida Keys on "Black Friday" in June 1989.

Led by the late Rep. Dante Fascell, Congress passed a ban on drilling off the Keys in 1990, and the state and federal governments later extended a ban to the entire Florida coast. The designation of Florida Keys waters as a national marine sanctuary in 1990 assured oil rigs would not set up within sanctuary boundaries, which extend about 12 miles offshore.

In a development that has revived memories of those protests, the Department of the Interior announced Jan. 3 that it had created a new set of "administrative" ; boundaries among the states with oil interests in the Gulf of Mexico.

The rule published in the Federal Register moves the boundary between Florida and Louisiana waters dozens of miles east of the existing "planning" boundary that federal and state authorities so far have relied upon to determine which state's environmental decisions apply and how proceeds from oil drilling might be split. Florida officials have long opposed drilling near the state's coast, while Louisiana leaders are pushing for more drilling to boost the state's economy.

"The things that are going on right now are pretty spooky, but that's what happens when people's attention is diverted elsewhere," said Mimi Stafford, who runs a commercial fishing business with Simon. "I think we have to continue to be as vigilant as we can."

The Department of the Interior says the new administrative boundaries would not necessarily reopen areas to drilling. The boundaries are tied to energy legislation that directs the department to research alternative energy sources and might be used to craft a five-year plan outlining where the federal government will issue offshore leases beginning in 2007, according to a spokeswoman for Interior's Minerals Management Service. She said agency rules prevent her from being named.

The administrative boundaries "have no impact on revenue sharing or moratoria, no impact on previous administrative commitments or presidential withdrawals [of areas for drilling]," she said. "They create options for the secretary to consider in drafting a five-year plan." Completion of the plan is imminent, she said.

Florida's two senators and 14 of its Republican and Democratic congressional representatives questioned the new boundaries in a Jan. 23 letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

"While the long-term effects of this change remain unclear, we are concerned that this is yet another attempt to undermine Florida's ability to control activities off its own coast, including offshore oil and gas drilling," according to the letter, signed by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., whose district includes the Florida Keys. "To Florida's residents, I tell them this: Rest assured, we will continue working together, using whatever means necessary, to ensure that Florida maintains control of offshore activities near our coast," she said in a prepared statement.

Florida politicians are concerned about the undeveloped Lease Sale Area 181, an area off the Florida Panhandle that has been protected by a congressional moratorium since 1990. In 2002, the federal government opened the southwestern section of Area 181 and awarded 95 leases for bids totaling $340 million. The leases were issued in an area more than 100 miles from Florida's coast, according to the Minerals Management Service. Other parts of Area 181 could be leased for drilling if included in the Department of Interior's five-year plan.

Attempts to legislate a change in the boundaries and open other parts of Area 181 to drilling failed in Congress last year. Richard Charter, co-chair of the environmental group National Outer Continental Shelf Coalition, said the new rule creating administrative boundaries is a "holiday sneak attack" to accomplish something that Congress could not.

DeeVon Quirolo of Reef Relief, who helped organize Black Friday in Key West in 1989, said Keys residents should watch for any changes that might clear the way for offshore drilling near Florida's Gulf coast.

Drilling in the region, even hundreds of miles from the Keys, could send mud laden with toxins and compounds into the loop current that arcs from the Yucatan Channel into the Gulf of Mexico and down the west coast of Florida toward the Keys, said Quirolo.

"It is the gulf loop-current that makes [drilling] dangerous because it brings that drilling mud right into the nearshore waters," she said. Sediment in water can kill fragile corals that are part of the Keys reef system.

The protests in Key West in 1989 were triggered by plans for drilling northwest of the Dry Tortugas islands 70 miles west of Key West, an area that is now part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. That wasn't the first time the Keys were eyed as a potential oil source.

In 1959, Gulf Oil Company began exploratory drilling about 20 miles west of Key West near the uninhabited Marquesas Keys.

According to the 1962 report, "Florida Petroleum Exploration and Prospects," four permits were granted for drilling near the Marquesas. The permits allowed drilling of up to 20,000 feet in one instance, but equipment failed before those depths were reached. The report does not say whether oil was found, and the industry normally would not reveal that information, said Key West historian Tom Hambright.

"In the '50s and '60s when they were doing tests down here, they could only drill in shallow water," Hambright said. "At that time, everybody was looking at it as big money."

riannotta@keysnews.com