MANKATO — Less than a week after hearing delegates at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul chanting “Drill here, drill now,” members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation were getting a different message from the Sierra Club.

The environmental organization, joined by a handful of other Mankato-area residents, said drilling offshore and in other ecologically sensitive areas would do little to solve the nation’s energy problem and would distract from real solutions.

The message of the press event in Jackson Park was aimed at Democratic Congressman Tim Walz and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, and the Sierra Club planned to deliver the point personally to the local offices of both lawmakers. It comes as Congress is reconvening after the August recess and political conventions and is under pressure to take aim at high gas prices.

“The vote coming up on oil is one of the key ones we face,” said John Hottinger, who represented Mankato and St. Peter in the state Senate until retiring two years ago and is now on the Sierra Club’s state board of directors.

Many Republicans in Congress are pushing the same course as the RNC delegates — lift the moratorium on new drilling leases off the coasts of the United States and in the Alaskan wilderness. And they hope to force a vote in Congress prior to the election, possibly in the next two weeks.

Both Coleman and Walz have signed onto separate plans they each portray as a compromise that incorporates more drilling along with a greater investment in renewable and alternative sources of energy.

But Hottinger maintains the drilling proposals are a red herring that will do virtually nothing to solve the nation’s growing energy problem. According to Bush administration figures, lifting the moratorium would produce additional oil equivalent to 1 percent of the current domestic production and that wouldn’t occur until about 2030, Hottinger said.

“The oil companies have stoked up this debate,” he said, calling for Walz and Coleman to return to previous positions opposing more drilling. “... We’re asking them to stick to that point of view even as the pressure comes.”

Walz will continue to push for a vote on the legislation produced by the Bipartisan House Energy Working Group, a group of about 20 Republican and Democratic representatives who worked outside their party leadership to try to reach a compromise plan, said Walz spokeswoman Meredith Salsbery. The legislation retains drilling restrictions within a certain distance of the coast and in environmentally sensitive areas.

But it opens many other areas to drilling, using the royalties paid by oil companies to finance conservation and renewable energy programs.

Salsbery called the bipartisan plan “a comprehensive, balanced plan that uses $1 trillion in royalty payments generated from expanded offshore drilling to speed up our nation’s transition to clean and affordable fuels.”

Coleman has joined a group of 16 senators from both parties looking to boost domestic oil production while also investing in conservation and renewable energy and promoting non-petroleum energy such as coal and nuclear.

Cesia Kearns, a Sierra Club organizer, said the offshore drilling portions of any compromise bill are a mistake “because the risks involved in drilling far outweigh the benefits.”

“The only answer to ending our addiction to oil is to use less of it,” Kearns said.