A House panel is postponing Wednesday's vote to extend a ban on offshore drilling.

The move comes just as President Bush is making another public plea to lawmakers to open U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas development during a time of record gas and oil prices.

Lawmakers had been planning to do the opposite: continue the existing ban into late 2009. The Appropriations Committee say it's delaying the vote because the panel plans to take up disaster relief measures involving the Midwest flooding.

Energy companies have been banned from waters along both the East and West coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico since 1981. In addition to asking that the ban be lifted, Bush is asking Congress to make it easier for oil refineries to be expanded.