Norton eyes oil and gas alternatives outside ANWR
Date: 04-Nov-02
Country: USA
Author: Yereth Rosen
"There are other places for us to look for oil in the future," she said after delivering a speech to a Republican group.
She cited the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the western North Slope. "Certainly we have plans to move forward with NPR-A development," she said.
She also cited federal territory off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico and the gas-prospective Rocky Mountain Region.
Norton, in Alaska to boost the gubernatorial bid of Republican Senator Frank Murkowski, stopped short of her earlier statement that President Bush should veto any national energy legislation that omits Arctic Refuge drilling.
Nonetheless, she said, from the Interior Department's perspective, "ANWR is the significant provision in the energy bill."
In her speech, Norton said the delay in opening the ANWR coastal plain to drilling "caused the oil industry to retrench" in Alaska. President Bill Clinton vetoed legislation that would have opened ANWR to oil development, she noted.
But with President Bush pushing for the development, a victory on the issue may be close at hand, she said.
"I believe that we would already have won if we had had a fair fight," she said. She blamed procedural moves by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and environmentalist campaigning that she termed "blatant distortion about the facts" for holding back Congressional approval for the drilling.
Murkowski said Congress will resume work on energy legislation when it reconvenes the week after the election.
A provision authorizing Arctic Refuge drilling remains in the version of energy legislation pending in a conference committee, he said.
"Unfortunately we're one vote short on ANWR, on keeping it in. We've already had kind of a head count and we're one down," he said. "But amazing things happen, and we haven't given up hope."
