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Politics : Leftwing Agenda to Destroy the US -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (847)	5/9/2006 10:08:16 PM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 908

Access to Alaska oil, revenue closer Senate votes to keep drilling language in budget bill Last Update: 12:42 PM ET Nov 3, 2005 WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - With rising oil prices and record oil company profits serving as a backdrop, the Senate moved one step closer on Thursday to allow companies to drill for oil and gas in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Senate beat back an amendment offered by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to strike language from a pending budget reconciliation bill that would open the region to producers. *The amendment failed in a vote of 48-51.* Cantwell said the budget bill provided a "sweetheart deal" for the oil industry, which has long sought access to the oil and natural gas supplies thought to lie beneath the refuge. Republican lawmakers, frustrated with more than four years of failed efforts to overturn a ban on drilling in the region, tucked the language into the budget bill. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said it was time to make available known U.S. reserves of oil to boost available supplies and counter rising fuel prices. The bill would authorize companies to create a 2,000-acre footprint in the northern most portion of the refuge - the so-called coastal plain section, which includes 1.5 million acres bordering the Beaufort Sea. But opponents contend the incursion into the refuge will affect a much wider area. Critics, who have generally opposed all efforts to open the protected area to exploration, said that the legislation won't translate into savings for American consumers at the gas pump because the oil could be sold outside the United States. The Senate subsequently passed in a bipartisan vote of 83-16 an amendment authored by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that would prevent any of the oil recovered in the refuge from being sold to foreign markets. Republicans sponsors also argued that leasing a portion of the refuge would reduce federal spending by generating $2.5 billion in federal leasing bid receipts between 2006 and 2010. Additionally, companies would pay royalties to the federal government and Alaska. The state and federal government would split these revenues in half. Environment groups have been waging a national campaign urging senators to vote against the budget legislation and the drilling provision, saying they plan to highlight how members voted in upcoming elections. The bill still faces a vote in the House, where its chances of passage are good, followed by joint House-Senate negotiations over the final language of the budget bill. In 1995, President Bill Clinton vetoed a similar bill that would have opened the refuge to drilling.