White House confident Senate will okay Alaska drilling
Date: 16-Aug-01
Country: USA
Author: Chris Baltimore
The area in question, a remote area in northeast Alaska called the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), is ground zero for President George W. Bush's energy package to boost domestic production and wean Americans from some of their dependence on foreign oil imports.
"This administration is confident that it can move this package in its entirety," Karen Knutson, deputy director of Vice President Dick Cheney's national energy policy taskforce, said at a panel hosted by a conservative think-tank.
The House of Representatives earlier this month voted to open the refuge, but legislation to drill in ANWR will likely face an uphill battle in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
At a panel discussion on the issue hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, a Senate staffer was careful not to pronounce an easy victory for the bill
"It's tough for us to prognosticate exactly what's going to happen in the Senate," said Dan Kish, a staffer on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The committee will likely move ANWR-inclusive legislation onto the Senate floor in September, he said.
DRILLING WITH TURKEY BASTERS
Meanwhile, spin doctors on the panel drummed up support for ANWR drilling and painted environmentalists who oppose the action as quazi-religious jingoes. The panel was titled "The Truth About ANWR."
Word choice lies at the center of the political battle over ANWR. Environmentalists and most Democratic lawmakers vigorously oppose drilling there and portray the area as the pristine center of the country's wilderness spirit.
Pro-drilling advocates see ANWR as a flat, treeless tundra devoid of life where temperatures routinely dip below zero and it is dark for months at a time.
ANWR "is the most God-forsaken place around," and would likely be chosen as the site to divert an Earth-bound asteroid, said Jonah Goldberg, an editor with the National Review.
Green groups have put environmental sentimentality ahead of economic sense, Goldberg said, and would oppose ANWR drilling "even if there were 100 billion trillion barrels of oil and you could get it out with a turkey baster," he said.
THE RISE OF ECO-PAGANISM
Panelists described what they called a quazi-religious movement among environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to oppose ANWR drilling.
The uprising of opposition is akin to "eco-Paganism," and "ANWR has become a crystallizing element in this religious fervor," said Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The ANWR debate underscores the wealth and prosperity most Americans enjoy, Smith said. "When you're starving to death, you don't get concerned about the trees and the bugs and bunnies in your area," Smith said.
UPHILL BATTLE IN SENATE
Knutson pointed out that despite current opposition in the Senate to drilling among most Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans, that chamber has in the past voted to open the refuge. But the measures never made it into law.
The administration has pledged to drill ANWR in an "environmentally friendly way," Knutson said.
The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives on Aug. 2 passed an energy bill in a 240-to-189 vote that includes limited drilling in ANWR. That was after a separate amendment to block drilling in the refuge failed by a narrower margin - 223 to 206.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, declared any bill containing ANWR dead-on-arrival in the Senate, and Democrat John Kerry of Massachusetts has vowed to filibuster such a bill.