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Senate rejects oil drilling in Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge
H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, April 18, 2002
Breaking News Sections
(04-18) 11:39 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
The Senate by a wide margin on Thursday rejected
oil development in an Arctic wildlife refuge that has
been a centerpiece of the Bush administration's
energy agenda.
Senate Republicans fell 14 votes short, 54-46, of
the 60 needed to break a Democratic filibuster and
allow a vote on an amendment to open the wildlife
refuge to oil companies.
Alaska's two senators, who had led the fight for oil
drilling, expressed disappointment, but held off
formally withdrawing their amendment.
"It's not over yet," said Sen. Frank Murkowski,
R-Alaska. He said he had other amendments
related to the refuge planned, but didn't elaborate.
Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said
Murkowski probably will withdraw his drilling
amendment, so the Senate can move forward and
pass the energy bill.
But with pro-drilling forces falling short of even a
majority, oil development of the Alaska refuge may
be dead in Congress for this year. "The vote really
settles the issue in the Senate," said Sen. Byron
Dorgan, D-N.D.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said
President Bush would continue to fight for opening
the refuge. But he sidestepped a question on
whether Bush would sign an energy bill that does
not include refuge drilling.
The Senate "missed an opportunity to lead America
to greater energy independence," said Fleischer.
Eight Republicans joined most Democrats in
opposing the drilling measure. Five Democrats
supported the drilling amendment, offered by the
two Alaska senators.
While the House last summer approved drilling in
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that bill will
have to be reconciled with legislation expected to
be passed by the Senate. Drilling supporters in
Congress and at the White House have worried that
a poor showing in the Senate might jeopardize
getting a drilling measure out of the House-Senate
negotiations.
Drilling supporters argued the refuge's oil was
essential for America's energy security and its
development would produce tens of thousands of
jobs.
But Democrats said no oil would flow for a decade
and would have little impact in oil imports or fuel
prices.
"Development (of the refuge) would irreversibly
damage this natural resource," said Sen. Joe
Lieberman, D-Conn., a leader of the filibuster.
Murkowski said that without ANWR drilling "there
is not one single thing in this energy bill that
increases oil production. "One can only wonder
what the OPEC cartel is thinking today," he said
after the Senate vote, alluding to the foreign oil
producers and U.S. reliance on oil imports.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, blamed "radical
environmental organizations" for shutting off a
needed energy resource. His state would receive
half of the royalties from oil taken from the refuge.
An attempt to gain some pro-drilling votes by
funneling money from future Arctic refuge oil leases
to help steelworkers and coal miners was rejected
64-36.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who has led efforts
in the Senate to try to help steelworkers facing
economic hard times, called the proposal "an empty
promise" that could later be dropped, and urged its
rejection.
Drilling for the billions of barrels of oil believed to lie
beneath the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of the
sprawling refuge has been the most contentious
issue facing senators trying to craft energy
legislation.
Bush repeatedly has argued that the oil can be
extracted without harming the environment or
wildlife, and he has cited Iraq's current oil embargo
as proof that new drilling is needed more than ever.
But environmentalists and many Senate Democrats
-- as well as a handful of GOP senators -- argued
the oil can be found elsewhere without risking the
refuge and its wildlife, including a herd of 123,000
caribou that calves each year on the coastal plain.
During two days of sometimes emotional debate,
drilling supporters assailed "radical"
environmentalists who have opposed drilling and
talked as much about the recent turmoil in the
Middle East and Iraq's suspension of oil shipments
as about the refuge itself.
"There's an inferno in the Mideast and we're
importing more than 50 percent of our oil," said
Murkowski, arguing that extracting the oil in
ANWR is a matter of national security because it
will cut the need for imports.
Drilling opponents scoffed at that argument.
"I've learned a few lessons about national security
as a soldier and a senator, but the mathematics I
learned in elementary school prove that Arctic
drilling won't make a difference for national
security," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a
decorated Vietnam veteran.
Kerry said the United States has 3 percent of the
world's oil and uses 25 percent of the supply. "The
solution is not in the Arctic," he said.
If energy security was the issue, he said,
Republicans should have supported his proposal,
which was rejected earlier, to require increased
automobile fuel efficiency.
The drilling issue has attracted intense lobbying by
environmentalists who have made it their No. 1
issue. Stung last summer when the
Republican-controlled House passed an energy bill
that would open the refuge to oil development, they
vowed to press the issue in the
Democratic-controlled Senate.
"Oil rigs do not belong in the Arctic Wildlife
Refuge," said Mark Van Putten, president of the
National Wildlife Federation.
Geologists believe ANWR's 1.5 million-acre
coastal plain may contain 11.6 billion barrels of oil,
almost as much as has been taken from nearby
Prudhoe Bay.
At peak production, ANWR would supply about
1.9 million barrels a day, according to the Interior
Department estimates. The United States today
uses 19 million barrels a day, 57 percent of that
from imports.
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04/17/2002 - Democrats feel
filibuster, quick vote, can
defeat Arctic drilling bill .
04/17/2002 - Senate nears
vote on Arctic drilling, with
opponents predicting victory
over major Bush energy
initiative .
04/17/2002 - Democrats feel
filibuster, quick vote, can
defeat Arctic drilling bill .
04/08/2002 - GOP may drop
arctic-drilling push in Senate,
hoping to revive in
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