Summery of what we can expect this week on Arctic Drilling.  Phyllis
Ben Geman, E&E Daily senior reporter
Senate floor debate over the fiscal year 2007 budget resolution starts
today with a floor battle expected this week over inclusion of Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge oil drilling in the package.
The resolution approved in the Senate Budget Committee last week includes
a $3 billion reconciliation instruction to the Senate's energy panel,
which Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) intends to meet by authorizing oil
and gas lease sales on the refuge's coastal plain.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) plans to offer an amendment to remove ANWR
from the budget process. Last year, drilling supporters broke through
with a razor-thin majority in the Senate in turning back a Cantwell
amendment to strike a similar instruction from the fiscal 2006
resolution.
Advocates of leasing ANWR's 1.5 million acre coastal plain are using the
budget process as a vehicle because budget measures cannot be
filibustered. Supporters are well shy of the 60 votes needed to break a
filibuster on the issue.
Several story themes appear likely to resurface this week on the
importance of developing new domestic supplies and the extent to which
drilling will fragment and endanger the Arctic ecosystem. ANWR is
estimated to contain 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of recoverable
oil.
But there are also newer issues that bear watching as the floor fight
looms, the "ANWR-only" reconciliation strategy in particular. This year
the only reconciliation instruction in the budget is for the Energy and
Natural Resources Committee, compared to last year's budget that sought
cuts to health entitlement and other mandatory spending programs.
Entitlement cuts would have proven even more controversial in an election
year, so Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) left them out this
year.
The House is not expected to take up the budget resolution until after
the St. Patrick's Day recess, and it is not clear whether there will be
an effort to cut mandatory spending or to what degree. Last year in the
House, unified Democratic opposition to the entitlement cuts helped give
GOP moderates leverage to force their leaders to jettison ANWR from their
reconciliation package (E&E Daily, March 9).
Athan Manuel of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group says Gregg's
decision not to include spending cuts could work against passage of the
budget resolution. "When he did that, he transformed the budget into an
Arctic drilling bill," said Manuel, who heads PIRG's ANWR effort. Last
year, several moderate GOP senators who backed the effort to strip ANWR
drilling eventually voted for the overall budget resolution, which
narrowly passed.
A recent oil spill in Alaska could also shake up the debate. Alaska state
officials last week estimated a Prudhoe Bay crude oil spill discovered
this month was as much as 267,000 gallons, the largest on record on the
North Slope. But it remains much less than the 11 millions gallons
spilled by the Exxon Valdez when it ran aground in Prince William Sound
in 1989.
Environmental groups call the spill proof that oil development would
endanger ANWR. "Aging infrastructure, corroded pipes and failed
leak-detection systems ensure that more big accidents like this are a
matter of time, especially if Congress opens up the refuge," said Natalie
Brandon, policy director for the Alaska Wilderness League, in a prepared
statement following estimates of the spill's size last week.
Also worth watching is the effect of Interior Secretary Gale Norton's
departure from the Cabinet. Last week, Norton announced she is leaving
Interior at month's end, so the Bush administration's principal advocate
of ANWR drilling has become a lame duck as the effort -- a multi-step
process -- gets under way this year.
Whether this changes the congressional dynamic is not clear. While a key
advocate has announced plans to leave, ANWR is largely a matter of inside
congressional machinations, and also comes as the administration's
political force on the Hill appears to be shrinking.
Most positions on the issue are also firm at this point. Drilling backers
broke through in the Senate last year not as a result of changed minds
but because several freshman senators in the 109th Congress in favor of
developing the refuge replaced members who opposed it. "It really comes
down to just a couple of votes in Congress as opposed to anything the
administration is or is not doing," said John Bisney, spokesman for the
American Petroleum Institute.
Manuel calls the departure a recognition that "last year was their best
chance to open it up."
The process
Votes on amendments to the $2.8 trillion budget package are expected to
begin in the middle of the week. A number of steps are needed before
leasing could be allowed.
It requires a final budget resolution deal between the chambers that
contains reconciliation instructions paving the way for development, and
then actual leasing authorization through the subsequent budget
reconciliation process, with the congressional landscape quite uncertain.
It remains unclear how large the differences between the two chambers'
budget resolutions will be. "I would expect the House to at least make a
push for entitlement reforms within their budget resolution," said Brian
Riedl, a budget expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Looking further ahead, if there is to be a House-Senate budget deal this
year, Riedl said predicting the content is difficult. "Generally,
Congress is able to come up with a conferenced budget resolution, and I
would not expect them to fail this year," he said. "What is in it is
anybody's guess."
 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see:
 http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp