Posted on 04/19/2002 3:54:57 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
The Senate's rejection Thursday of oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will make it harder for Senate and House negotiators to reconcile the energy policy bills.
In a key procedural vote, ANWR drilling supporters mustered only 46 Senate votes, falling short of a symbolically significant simple majority and well below the 60-vote supermajority needed to add the measure to the Senate energy bill.
Last August the Republican-controlled House voted 240-to-189 in favor of an energy bill that includes allowing limited drilling in the 1.5-million-acre ANWR coastal plain, a region believed to hold some of the largest undiscovered U.S. oil reserves.
"At this point, it's an uphill battle" to keep ANWR in a conferenced bill, said William Kovacs, vice president for environmental policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (news - web sites).
The Senate's sound rejection of the Arctic drilling plan and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's, D-S.D., strong opposition to ANWR development suggest Daschle will pick negotiators who are firmly anti-drilling for the Senate-House conference.
"As long as Democrats are in control of the Senate, it won't happen," Daschle said Thursday of the ANWR drilling plan.
The Senate is expected to continue debate until early next week on a number of other proposed amendments to the energy bill, which it has been debating since mid-March. Among remaining issues are proposals for nearly $14 billion in energy sector tax incentives over 11 years and measures to scale back the bill's renewable fuels mandate.
If the Senate passes its bill, Senate and House negotiators will have to hash out significant differences in their legislation going well beyond the ANWR drilling plan. For example, the House legislation has twice as much in energy sector tax incentives, contains no renewable fuels mandate and virtually no electricity restructuring measures.
Advocates of ANWR drilling, including President George W. Bush (news - web sites), were still holding out hope the drilling plan could pass in conference.
"The President will continue to fight for the tens of thousands of jobs that are created by opening ANWR, as well as, more importantly, for the need for America to be able to achieve more energy independence that would result from opening ANWR," White House said in a prepared statement.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the President continued to hope the House ANWR plan would pass in conference, but declined to speculate whether he would veto an energy bill that doesn't allow drilling in refuge.
Alaska 's Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles said retaining the ANWR drilling plan in conference "may be an uphill fight", but he plans to continue to promote environmentally responsible development of the ANWR coastal plain.
At a briefing after the Senate voted on drilling, Alaska 's Republican Senators Frank Murkowski and Ted Stevens vowed they'd continue to fight to open the refuge located in the northeast corner of their state.
"We're going to insist that this come up again and again," Stevens said, suggesting that he might propose allowing drilling on land within the refuge that belongs to Inupiat Eskimos.
The Inupiat Eskimos own about 94,000 acres in the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain that drilling supporters want to open. Under an agreement with the federal government, the Eskimos have agreed not to develop oil and gas resources until Congress approves development of the surrounding federal land.
Murkowski suggested the Senate would be more amenable to ANWR drilling in the future if international events further highlight U.S. reliance on foreign oil.
What international events do they need? Nuclear war in the middle east?
Irrespective of the Eskimo wishes, such action would enrage the enviro-nazis. I can just see them calling such drilling the "21st century version of the 19th century rape and pillage of the Native-American peoples by the greedy land-grabbing white man". And the fact that the eskimos want another income besides the government dole will be brushed off as a slick selling job by the oil-industry, thereby yet again completing a put down of a minority by know-what's-best-for you liberals.
Keep saying that, Tommy. That, coupled with $2.50 a gallon gas may just be the impetus needed to get you out of control in the Senate.
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