Senate Prepares to Vote on Alaska Refuge Drilling Proposal
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by H. Josef Hebert Associated Press March 16, 2005
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WASHINGTON — Despite
increased GOP strength, the Senate appeared to be evenly divided
Tuesday in advance of a key vote on whether to allow oil drilling in
an Alaska wildlife refuge.
A flurry of last-ditch lobbying
suggested a close vote Wednesday when senators take up the refuge
development issue in the first major environmental vote of this
Congress.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who for more than two
decades has been unable to persuade Congress to open the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge to oil companies, said he was optimistic
this time.
"We believe we have the votes," Stevens said at a
news conference. Alaska officials view the refuge's oil as replacing
dwindling shipments from the aging Prudhoe Bay fields on the North
Slope.
Seeking to sidestep a Democratic filibuster that
would require 60 votes to overcome, Republican leaders have put the
Alaska refuge provision into a budget document that is immune to a
filibuster under Senate rules.
During several hours of
Senate debate, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said that even at peak
production the refuge would account for less than 2.5 percent of
U.S. oil needs. "How in the world can this be the centerpiece of our
energy policy?" asked Durbin, arguing that more conservation and
more fuel efficient automobiles would save more oil than the Alaska
refuge would produce.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a staunch
supporter of drilling, said the refuge's oil represents "the most
significant onshore production capacity" in the country. "We should
do everything we can to produce as much as we can," he said, citing
the country's growing dependence on oil imports.
Sen. Lisa
Murkowski, R-Alaska, rejected claims that oil rigs and pipelines
would ruin a national environmental treasure, as critics charge. "We
know we've got to do it right. ... It's a fragile environment," said
Murkowski, adding that oil companies in Alaska are subject to the
most stringent environmental requirements in the world.
However, Democrats vowed to fight the measure. They
complained that an issue as divisive as opening a pristine area of
wild land, specifically protected by Congress from development,
should be debated independently and not as part of the budget
process.
"They want to sneak this into the budget," said
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. She predicted a "very close vote" on a
proposal she and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., offered Tuesday to strip
the refuge language from the budget document.
Drilling
supporters have tried for years to allow oil companies access to
what is believed to be billions of barrels of oil beneath the
refuge's 1.5-million acre coastal plain.
President Bush has
made access to the refuge's oil a key part of his energy agenda.
Last week, Bush declared that 10 billion barrels of oil could be
pumped from the refuge and that it could be done "with almost no
impact on land or wildlife."
Environmentalists argue that
while new technologies have reduced the drilling footprint, ANWR's
coastal plain still would contain a spider web of pipelines that
would disrupt calving caribou and disturb polar bears, musk oxen and
the annual influx of millions of migratory birds.
Developing
the oil "is going to have no effect in the long-term on America's
energy future," Kerry told reporters. Even if the refuge were to
supply 1 million barrels of oil a day, at its peak expected
production, the United States would remain heavily dependent on
foreign oil unless there were serious efforts to reduce consumption,
he said.
How much oil would be economically recoverable from
the refuge is still unclear.
Only one exploratory well has
been drilled, and the results have been kept secret. The U.S.
Geological Survey, using seismic studies, estimated in 1998 that
between 5.6 billion to 16 billion barrels of technically recoverable
oil is likely to be beneath the refuge's tundra.
But how
much of that oil would be attractive to oil companies would depend
on the price of oil. In recent years a number of major oil companies
have stopped lobbying for opening ANWR, focusing their activities
elsewhere in the world.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton said
she has no doubt that oil companies would seek out exploratory
leases in the Alaska refuge. If given a go-ahead from Congress, she
said, she would expect to begin offering leases in 2007 with refuge
oil beginning to flow down the Alaska pipeline "seven or 10 years
after that."
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Source: Associated Press
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