A measure that aims to send most of the potential billions of dollars in Deepwater Horizon spill penalties to the five Gulf Coast states faces a House floor vote this week as part of Republicans' effort to pass a 90-day extension of transportation programs.

The provision would wall off 80 percent of penalties resulting from the oil spill in a special trust fund that Congress could later tap to pay for economic and environmental restoration projects in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

The measure is attached to the 90-day extension that House Republicans are trying to pass so as to move to conference with the Senate on a transportation package.

The House Rules Committee will meet tomorrow to set the terms for floor debate on the extension, which also includes language to approve the Keystone XL pipeline (Greenwire, April 13).

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) previously introduced the Gulf of Mexico spill fine provision as an amendment in February, and the House voted at the time to include it in a larger transportation package (E&E Daily, Feb. 17).

The provision is a bare-bones version of the so-called "RESTORE Act" that would require 80 percent of the potential $20 billion or more in fines to be deposited in a newly created "Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund." Only an act of Congress could draw from the fund, and only for the purpose of economic or environmental restoration in the five Gulf states.

Because it does not spend money headed to the Treasury, like the full RESTORE Act would, but rather sets aside the dollars into a separate trust fund within the Treasury, the measure does not come with the troublesome $1.2 billion price tag attached to the full version of RESTORE.

"We need to secure the fines from the Deepwater Horizon disaster for Gulf Coast recovery before a settlement is reached, and this amendment starts that process," Scalise said in a statement issued after the February vote.

The Senate passed its full version of RESTORE in March (E&ENews PM, March 8).