ANWR a No-Go

In a particularly arrogant attempt to fly under the radar, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) recently piggybacked legislation authorizing the drilling of a roughly South Carolina-sized portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the $453 billion Defense Spending Bill that the House was trying to pass before recessing for Christmas holidays. This same legislation also included $29 billion in funding for victims of Hurricane Katrina, as well as an extra installment of low-income heating assistance for the poor. Both were provisions that desperately needed to be passed before the end of the year and the start of a new and arduous budget process.

On Thursday, December 15th, Senator Stevens announced that he had persuaded House and Senate members to attach a pro-drilling amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill, a piece of legislation that ensured US troops would continue to be paid, fed, and armed. A fight began, which predictably split Congress in half.

Stevens has been trying this same tactic for years, and almost every time he’s failed to get Congressional approval for his provisions. This time, he threatened to hold up a bill every member of Congress wanted to pass, and used his power as chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee to add the provision for drilling, thereby putting his personal desires over the interests of the rest of the nation. Tapping ANWR’s potential ten billion barrels of crude oil is a major piece of the Bush Administrations National Energy Plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to potentially reduce gas prices. Many supporters see ANWR as their final chance to give oil-companies - long time friends of the Bush White House - an opportunity to increase domestic oil production, and boost the corporate profits that are already seeing great results from the gasoline price spike during Hurricane Katrina.

In response to the announcement by Senator Stevens, Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic Leader, declared that if the ANWR drilling language was in the final draft of the defense spending bill, he would argue that it was a direct violation of Senate rules banning the addition of legislative amendments to a unrelated bills, and would refuse to pass it. In order to follow the rules of amendments to legislation within the Senate, the Republicans would have to be willing to argue that domestic oil production is in the best interest of our national security. (They’ve certainly claimed many other things are, including warrantless wiretapping of the citizens of the United States). According to Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), “It’s appalling that the United States Senate is willing to hold our troops and hurricane victims hostage to their desperate attempts to satisfy big oil, and drill in the Arctic Refuge”.

When you look at the structure of the proposal being added into the bill, it is in no surprise that Senator Stevens, Mr. Pork-Barrel himself, is the most ardent supporter of the measure. Half of the $10 billion in bonus bids that energy companies would pay for the right to drill in ANWR would go directly to his state, and the other half to the federal government.

On Monday, December 19th, the House passed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, with the legislation authorizing safe energy production in ANWR still intact, by a vote of 308 – 106. The provision was allowed to pass in a session in which the members of the House were split. Both Democrats and Republicans, when given the choice to stall a measure so crucial to our troops in Iraq, or fight a back-alley attempt at supporting big oil, were forced to chose the former. However, when the appropriations bill reached the Senate floor for approval, it met a stiff challenge. Democratic Senators threatened to filibuster, and even some close friends of Senator Stevens, such as Senator Byrd (D-WV), defected and voted against the inclusion of the measure.

In the pre-dawn hours, the measure was defeated in a vote of 56-44. Republicans were unable to garner the 60 votes needed to eliminate the threat of a Democratic filibuster to block the measure from being passed, and a definitive blow was dealt to those advocating ANWR drilling. Although this battle between drilling opponents and advocates was won by the Democrats, all agree that they have not seen the end of this fight, and the provision will surely be brought back to the floor of both houses many times by the Republicans, with Stevens undoubtedly leading the charge.

This fight has been going on for almost 25 years, ever since a provision was passed in Congress in 1980 in which they agreed to allow ANWR’s oil to be developed at some unspecified future date. Those who advocate drilling in ANWR contend that the oil that exists there - an estimated 1 million barrels a day during peak production - is a necessary component for our independence from imported oil, and is needed for national security. Meanwhile, drilling opponents say that ANWR’s oil would do little to curtail imports, and that the irreparable harm to the wildlife in the reserve would greatly outweigh any meager gains that may be found through the drilling of even a portion of this coastal plain. They argue that it would provide no more benefit then real legislation increasing EPA standards for fuel efficiency would for cars that are currently being produced domestically.

If the environmental experts are right, then we should not be concerning ourselves with such a meager addition to our oil supply. Adding a million barrels a day would do little more then what a small expansion of production by OPEC would do; there is no need for us to destroy such a precious reserve unless it is absolutely necessary. Especially if it is done for no other reason then to delay or ignore the need for higher fuel efficiency standards for the cars built by Detroit. The Republican Party and the Bush Administration should not be ignoring the effects these decisions will have on the environment in order to comply with the wishes of some of their biggest contributors. The considerations of what is best for the country as a whole should be placed above the selfish wishes of the few.