UPDATE - Senate vote on Alaska oil drilling bill blocked
Date: 05-Dec-01
Country: USA
Author: Tom Doggett
Republicans failed to get their energy package attached to an unrelated bill for railroad retirement benefits.
Initially, Republicans had hoped to add the energy provisions by winning over the 60 senators needed to support the move and block a threatened filibuster by Democrats opposed to opening the refuge.
The Senate's failure to adopt the energy language was a set back for the Bush administration, which wants to give energy firms access to the refuge to boost domestic oil supplies and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
However, energy legislation is not dead.
Republicans could again try to attach the energy bill to other legislation moving through the Senate, or wait and resume debate on the issue when lawmakers return from their holiday recess in late January.
"It is not over for energy. It can be offered to anything that moves," Senate Republican leader Trent Lott told reporters. "It's going to be offered again and again and again."
Frank Murkowski, the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, said he plans to file the energy bill this week as an amendment to other legislation, most likely the pending multibillion dollar economic stimulus package.
"To me it's self evident that it's the stimulus bill, that's where it belongs," he said.
The energy plan faces a tough fight in the Democratic-led Senate, where many Democrats contend that stricter conservation and fuel efficiency standards could achieve the same goal.
Senate Republicans are pushing a comprehensive energy bill to reverse a decline in U.S. oil production, now at its lowest level since 1949. Slowing production has made the American economy - which uses about 20 million barrels of oil per day - dependent on the Middle East for the equivalent of one out of every four barrels of imported crude.
Republicans contend that U.S. firms need access to the estimated 16 billion barrels of oil in the refuge located in northeastern Alaska. If drilling was approved, it would take several years to bring the crude to market.
In early August, the Republican-led House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a similar bill to open the refuge, which is home to polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other wildlife.
The legislation has been opposed by many Senate Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has blocked a simple up-or-down vote on the measure because it would likely win the support of a majority of senators.
Murkowski said 54 or 55 senators would vote for drilling in the refuge, if Daschle would schedule such a vote.
Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, wants to wait until lawmakers return from their holiday recess to debate an energy bill. Democrats will introduce legislation this week that would focus more on energy conservation and keep the refuge, known by the acronym ANWR, closed.
"What we've got to do is look for new ways to conserve. Look for new ways to develop new kinds of energy and, obviously, spur production in those environmentally safe areas," Daschle said Sunday. "We don't need to drill in ANWR."
Most Democrats and environmental groups oppose opening the Arctic refuge, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has described as "one of the finest examples of wilderness left on the planet."
Green groups contend there is only a small chance that the entire estimated 16 billion barrels of oil in the refuge could be extracted, because of the high cost of drilling in such a remote area.
"When the Senate does take up energy legislation early next year, we're confident that drilling in the Arctic Refuge for a speculative six-month supply of oil 10 years from now will be rejected as a short-sighted and unbalanced approach to our nation's energy needs," said Adam Kolton, an official with the Alaska Wilderness League.
Labor groups have joined Republicans in backing drilling in the refuge, saying it would create more than 700,000 jobs, but environmentalists say the number of jobs would be much lo
