U.S. Senate Blocks Drilling in Alaska Refuge

P. Mitchell Prothero
United Press Int

April 19, 2002

The Senate Thursday defeated 46 to 54 an amendment to open Alaska's
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas exploration by
refusing to end debate on the measure.

The mostly Republican
supporters of the amendment failed to draw enough support for the
measure to defeat a promised Democratic filibuster.

An amendment to the national energy policy bill under consideration by the Senate, the ANWR language was introduced and championed by Alaska Republican Sen. Frank Murkowski, who has pushed for the exploration in the name of reducing dependence on foreign oil imports.

"This is a national security issue," Murkowski said shortly before the vote, while displaying a large picture of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with "Oil is a Weapon" superimposed on it.

But Democrats opposed the plan because they claimed it would have a negative effect on the northern Alaska's ecology and because some studies indicate that the field lacks enough oil to justify the environmental damage.

"At best, ANWR has 2 percent of the nation's annual demand for oil," West Virginia Democratic Senator John Rockefeller IV said. "This is the last 5 percent of Alaska's North Slope that remains protected from exploration."

The debate on ANWR has been the most difficult section of the energy bill work undertaken by the Senate 20 legislative days ago.

For weeks, Democrats have been sure they could prevent the sponsors from getting the 60 votes necessary to end a filibuster, so they have been pressuring the GOP and Murkowski to introduce the amendment to ensure its defeat. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, had threatened to allow a Democrat to introduce similar language already approved by the House.

Democrats have wanted the language to be defeated on the Senate floor—instead of withdrawn from consideration, which frequently happens to hopeless measures—to ensure that a House-Senate conference committee that would reconcile both bills did not try to add the language to the final version.

Senate Republicans and the White House pushed an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to woo Democrats from steel-producing states by offering to use some oil revenues to pay the health and retirement benefits of laid-off steel workers. But Rockefeller—a strong proponent of the steel industry—said the offer failed because of bad-faith negotiating by the Bush administration.

"It has a provision that appears to use royalties for healthcare for retired steel workers," he said. "If this offer was true, then it would be hard for me–and other Senators–to resist. But (we) have been unable to get any assurance from the White House that that language would be included in any bill that came out of a conference committee."

The vote drew a sharp and immediate rebuke from the Interior Department.

"The Senate had the opportunity to strengthen our national security and to reduce our dependence on foreign oil," said Interior Secretary Gale Norton. "ANWR production passed the House of Representatives on a bipartisan vote. ANWR production continues to be strongly supported by labor unions and Alaska's citizens. We will continue to work with this coalition as the House and Senate move the energy legislation to conference."

Copyright 2002 by United Press International