Senate Votes to Allow Arctic Drilling...

WASHINGTON - Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush (news - web sites).
he Senate, by a 51-49 vote, rejected an attempt by Democrats and GOP moderates to remove a refuge drilling provision from next year's budget, preventing opponents from using a filibuster — a tactic that has blocked repeated past attempts to open the Alaska refuge to oil companies.

The action, assuming Congress agrees on a budget, clears the way for approving drilling in the refuge later this year, drilling supporters said.

The oil industry has sought for more than two decades to get access to what is believed to be billions of barrels of oil beneath the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northern eastern corner of Alaska.

Environmentalists have fought such development and argued that despite improve environmental controls a web of pipelines and drilling platforms would harm calving caribou, polar bears and millions of migratory birds that use the coastal plain.

Bush has called tapping the reserve's oil a critical part of the nation's energy security and a way to reduce America's reliance on imported oil, which account for more than half of the 20 million barrels of crude use daily. The Alaska refuge could supply as much as 1 million barrels day at peak production, drilling supporters said.

"We won't see this oil for 10 years. It will have minimal impact," argued Sen. Maria Cantwell (news, bio, voting record), D-Wash., a co-sponsor of the amendment that would have stripped the arctic refuge provision from the budget document. It is "foolish to say oil development and a wildlife refuge can coexist," she said.

Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass., argued that more oil would be saved if Congress enacted an energy policy focusing on conservation, more efficient cars and trucks and increased reliance on renewable fuels and expanded oil development in the deep-water Gulf where there are significant reserves.

But drilling proponents argued that modern drilling technology can safeguard the refuge and still tap the likely — though not yet certain — 10.4 billion barrels of crude in the refuge.

"Some people say we ought to conserve more. They say we ought to conserve instead of producing this oil," said Sen. Pete Domenici (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., "But we need to do everything. We have to conserve and produce where we can."

The vote Wednesday contrasted with the last time the Senate took up the ANWR drilling issue two years ago. Then, an attempt to include it in the budget was defeated. But drilling supporters gained strength last November when Republicans picked up three additional seats, all senators who favored drilling in the refuge.

LAST NIGHT

Mr. DOMENICI.

[snip]

If you think we ought to conserve, conserve. If you think we ought to produce more crude oil, produce it. None of these potential solutions are going to be enough because we are now struggling over the fact that we are importing so much crude oil. I heard a Senator say today that we might consider ANWR if we were collapsing.

Well, we won't know when we are collapsing, but we are pretty close. Right now, we are importing about 58 percent of the crude oil from a world that is in trouble, where some countries are fragile, and war might occur in others, and here we go along our merry way importing more and more oil. Petroleum imports are expected to reach 69 percent in the year 2025. Then we get a chance to produce 1 million barrels a day, and we are immediately confronted with those who say that is not very much. Why do we want to produce a million barrels of oil? Well, you know, this great United States is consuming 20.5 million barrels of oil a day and is currently only 11th on the scale of the most reserves on down the line. We are 11th from the top in the amount of oil reserves we have in our country. That is almost insignificant compared to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia ranks first in proven world oil reserves with 260 billion barrels. However, our reserves are only about 21.9 billion barrels.

I say to my good friend from Tennessee, the 1002 area we are discussing is estimated to have about 10 billion barrels of oil--that is very probable. Just do the arithmetic. Our country's entire oil reserves amount to 21.9 billion barrels. This area in ANWR will produce 10 billion barrels. Insignificant they say? Add the two together and we could have 31 billion barrels in reserves. Again, this property will comprise 10 billion barrels of it. That is one-third of the reserves of America that will be up there in Alaska, and we are being told it is insignificant. That is like saying all the oil we have in America is insignificant. Why don't we close Texas down? That must be insignificant. It must be insignificant because we buy it from the world. As long as the world can supply it, I guess we are going to have to keep on arguing about ANWR. If there are not any more ANWRs around, I don't know what we are going to look to.

I can tell you this. ANWR, with the potential for 1 million barrels of oil a day, will be the most significant onshore production capacity of any potential new onshore area in the United States--a brand new one. ANWR is by far the most promising site for onshore oil in the United States. You might say, since I learned that ANWR is so little, maybe America doesn't have much oil, and we should just not worry about having any.

I do not think so. I think we better do everything we can and must produce as much as we can. [snip]

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