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Senate OKs oil drilling in Alaska's ANWR
Democrats vow that the fight is not over for wilderness area
Thursday, March 17, 2005
By CHARLES POPE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
WASHINGTON -- With a hard-fought Senate vote yesterday clearing the way, supporters of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge said survey teams could arrive on the harsh landscape within a year and leases for tapping its significant deposits of oil and natural gas could be sold as soon as 2007.
And according to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, if all goes according to plan, oil and natural gas could be flowing from ANWR in seven to 10 years.
Those predictions, which once seemed unthinkable, emerged as far more likely in the wake of a 51-49 Senate vote to allow drilling for oil and natural gas in a protected part of the Alaskan wilderness. The vote was a major victory for President Bush and his supporters in business and elsewhere who had long advocated drilling in ANWR as a way to ease the nation's dependence on foreign supplies.
The breakthrough came after two days of heavy lobbying on both sides of an emotional issue that has dominated environmental politics for nearly a decade. Until yesterday, opponents had always been able to stop legislation to open ANWR, an ecologically rich and largely untouched area of northern Alaska that defenders said is far too valuable to threaten with development.
"This action is a crucial step in President Bush's plan for reducing America's dependence on foreign sources of energy through conservation, development of renewable energy sources and increased domestic production of traditional energy," Norton said after the vote.
Opponents, however, vowed not to give up, even though they conceded yesterday's vote was a major setback. They sharply criticized Republicans for attaching the ANWR provision to a resolution setting budget priorities.
"The fight over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is far from over," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who led the opposition. "We almost stopped this budget trickery on the floor today. ... I'll be prepared to use every tool at my disposal to stop drilling in the Arctic. We need a serious national strategy to move us toward energy independence."
Among other ideas, opponents said they would challenge the ANWR provision on parliamentary grounds. The challenge will argue that the ANWR provision is out of order on a budget bill because it deals with policy rather than money. Republicans counter that the provision is safe because it calls for the government to raise $2.7 billion by selling leases and through royalties from ANWR during the next five years.
The House has not included a similar provision in its budget, so the issue is still subject to negotiations later this year. But a House aide said that the chamber is inclined to agree to the Senate wording when the House and Senate bills are merged into one. The House has repeatedly passed measures by lopsided margins over the years to allow drilling in ANWR only to see the legislation stalled in the Senate.
Another possible hurdle is the fact that final passage of the budget bill containing the ANWR provision is not assured. Congress has been unable to pass the budget bill in two of the past three years, and this year there are major fights looming on Medicaid spending, tax cuts and other politically divisive questions.
"The (Republican-led) Senate just decided to make its job on the budget a whole lot harder," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group opposed to drilling.
"Shoe-horning a controversial measure like Arctic Refuge drilling into the budget where it doesn't belong was a parliamentary stunt to begin with, and it's one that could very well come back to haunt them," he said.
Still another question is how eager oil companies will be to try their luck in ANWR. BP, ConocoPhillips and ChevronTexaco have withdrawn from Arctic Power, the business coalition formed to lobby for drilling in ANWR. Among big oil companies, only ExxonMobil Corp. remains.
ExxonMobil did not have a direct comment on its plans, but a spokesman referred to an earlier statement in which the company said, "ExxonMobil supports environmentally responsible development within the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
With help from the White House, Alaska's Republican senators, Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, led efforts to pry open a 1.5 million-acre chunk of pristine wilderness that had been off limits to development for 25 years. The Interior Department estimates 10.4 billion barrels of oil lies beneath ANWR. Critics vehemently dispute that estimate, claiming most of the oil included in that projection is not recoverable.
"We believe this is the greatest reservoir for oil and gas on the North American continent so it really must be explored and developed," said Stevens, who has fought for 25 years to open ANWR to drilling.
But until yesterday, the politics were never good enough to push the bill into law. In some years Democrats successfully blocked ANWR provisions on the Senate floor. In 1996, both the House and Senate approved opening ANWR only to see President Clinton veto it.
But with a Republican in the White House and Republicans having increased their majorities in both the House and Senate, lobbyists and lawmakers alike said the balance of power had shifted enough to push ANWR through the Senate.
"The Senate has now moved toward keeping the promise it made to Alaskans in 1980," Stevens said. "We won the election and we promised we'd do this when we won that election and that's meaningful to me."
During the floor debate, Stevens singled out Cantwell, expressing surprise and anger that she would oppose drilling since much of the oil comes to Washington to be refined and used.
"I must express amazement that my colleague from Washington has introduced this amendment," Steven said, referring to Cantwell's provision that would have blocked drilling in ANWR.
"Washington produces no oil. If it were not for oil from my state, the Puget Sound region would be destitute," Stevens said.
But Cantwell pointed out that an argument based on the need for the United States to produce more oil domestically or help lower gas prices is flawed.
"Nothing in here guarantees we will lower gasoline prices or guarantee that the oil will stay in the United States," she said.
Later, Cantwell said: "We can't drill our way to energy independence in the Arctic. ... Most Americans agree that drilling in a wildlife refuge -- to secure a six-month supply of oil a decade from now -- just isn't worth it."
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