ENVIRONMENT & ENERGY DAILY (portion)

Thursday, December 15, 2005 





SPOTLIGHT 

1. ANWR 

Arctic drilling proponents may turn to defense bill 

Ben Geman, E&E Daily senior reporter 

Language opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is
unlikely to remain in the budget reconciliation bill, according to Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.),
forcing supporters to consider the defense appropriations bill to move
the language. 

"I don't think so," Domenici told reporters yesterday when asked if it
can stay in the budget bill. "The House has said they can't," he added,
in reference to a strong coalition of moderate House Republicans and a
unified Democratic caucus opposed to the measure. 

Domenici added that members have not abandoned efforts to move ANWR. "We
are looking for another vehicle. We are not giving up," he said. "We have
got to have a vote on it some way in the United States Senate. ... There
are some other ways to do it." 

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) told reporters he is still working to include
the measure in the budget reconciliation bill, but for the first time he
confirmed consideration of the defense spending legislation as well,
calling reconciliation and defense the two "prime targets." Domenici also
called the defense measure, which lawmakers hope to complete this year,
an option. 

"We are still exploring the possibility we might put ANWR on [the defense
bill]," Stevens said. "It will be on one bill or the other before I go
home." 

The House reconciliation package does not include ANWR drilling because
House leaders dumped it after moderate GOP members said it would cost
their support. The Senate version does include drilling as part of a
strategy to avoid a filibuster. 

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee,
yesterday said negotiations on the ANWR issue in the budget are "very
active and very fluid." And House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) has
said the spending reconciliation negotiations may bleed into next year. 

But Gregg said in a short interview he would prefer to complete the
effort this year. "It would be very difficult to do this package next
year," Gregg said. "This is an extremely complex piece of legislation
that should be done now. It is one of those pieces of legislation that
does not gain momentum sitting on the shelf." 


House members press for ANWR in budget 


Fifty-seven GOP members -- including House Resources Committee Chairman
Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) and Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe
Barton (R-Texas) -- yesterday urged GOP colleagues in a letter to back
inclusion of ANWR in the spending reconciliation bill, calling it a way
to help cut the deficit. 

The letter calls ANWR energy a needed source of domestic supply and lists
several reasons to back opening the coastal plain. It cites a recent
Congressional Budget Office statement that lease sales late in the decade
could generate $10 billion -- half of which would go to the federal
treasury. The $10 billion figure is double an earlier CBO estimate,
appearing this month in a CBO letter to Stevens after he asked the budget
forecasters to predict lease sale revenues using a higher assumed price
of oil. 

Moreover, the Republicans said leasing ANWR would create jobs and could
be done using technologies that minimize the environmental effects. The
letter also blames an old foe of the House GOP caucus -- President
Clinton -- for blocking Arctic drilling back in 1995. 

"Had President Clinton not vetoed our deficit reduction bill in 1995,
which included ANWR energy, the United States might now be reaping the
benefits of nearly 1.5 million barrels of additional energy supplies per
day," the letter states. "That is an amount equal [to] the entire world's
daily excess supply, the daily American production we lost in the gulf
due to the recent hurricanes, and roughly the amount we import from Saudi
Arabia every day." 

The letter says that while ANWR usually passes the House with some
Democratic support, "partisan politics" stand in the way this year.
Thirty Democrats voted in favor of ANWR development earlier this year
during debate over the recently enacted energy law, though drilling was
later dropped from the measure. But Democrats have remained united thus
far against GOP spending cut plans that include ANWR development. 

"While we hope this good policy will earn their support in a final
conference report, hope does not solve American energy problems. It is
critical that we remain united," the letter states. 


Stevens links ANWR, Gulf Coast assistance 


Stevens is hoping Gulf Coast assistance funds might help entice support
for ANWR. "Katrina will be on this [defense] bill. That's what makes the
defense bill a little bit attractive because Katrina will be there," he
said. "It is going to be awful hard to vote against Katrina." 

Attaching ANWR to the defense bill creates thorny issues for both sides
of the issue. Democratic opponents of developing the refuge have long
said they would filibuster drilling, which is why Senate drilling
proponents have hoped to include it in reconciliation legislation immune
from the procedural tactic. 

But filibustering a defense spending bill could be politically difficult,
especially when it aids the military in a time of war. "I would hope
people would not filibuster a defense bill with troops in the field,"
said Stevens said, who chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. 


Plan draws Democratic fire 


Leading Democratic opponents of ANWR drilling yesterday attacked Stevens'
plan to include ANWR in the defense measure but stopped short of
threatening a filibuster. 

"They should just accept that the American people aren't interested in
selling off America's wilderness to their buddies at the oil companies
and move on," said April Boyd, a spokeswoman for Sen. John Kerry
(D-Mass.), in a statement. 

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who has been leading Democratic efforts on
ANWR, also attacked the idea yesterday. "Desperate attempts to salvage
drilling legislation, which is all but dead in the budget reconciliation
process, by attaching it to legislation that is so important for our
troops on the ground in Iraq will get nowhere," she said in a statement. 

A Senate Democratic aide said there could be a point of order raised
against an effort to include ANWR because it is not in either the House
or Senate underlying appropriations bill. Brian Moore, legislative
director for the Alaska Wilderness League, attacked potential efforts to
attach ANWR to the appropriations measure. "This is clearly an amazing
example of legislating on an appropriations bill," he said. "It is a
cynical ploy." 

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