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."