HEADLINES
CONGRESS GIVETH AND
CONGRESS TAKETH AWAY
POLAR BEARS
THREATENED
ANWR vs. ARCTIC REFUGE: WHAT’S IN
A NAME?
CONGRESS GIVETH AND CONGRESS TAKETH AWAY
Some excerpts from E&E News PM reporters Alex Kaplun and Ben Geman
One of the priorities of the incoming Democratic majority is to roll back some of billions in subsidies that have been awarded over the years to the oil industry. Despite wallowing in record profits, Big Oil convinced their allies in Congress to continue handing them billions in subsidies. As Congress has been giving that money away, the new Congress plans to take it back and redirect it to cleaner, more sustainable, and safer energy alternatives.
Overall, House Democratic leaders plan to restructure roughly $20 billion of oil industry tax and royalty incentives, and plan to ultimately steer the funds into alternative energy development. The subsidy rollback is part of the new Democratic majority's opening 100-hour legislative showcase. The Democratic leadership is planning a January 18 vote on the energy measure.
Incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said lawmakers are "still working on the nuances" of the proposal and that it would not be introduced this week. He did, however, confirm it would roll back two tax incentives. One is the amortization of oil and gas exploration costs, which he said would raise $5 billion over 10 years. The second tax incentive on the chopping block is the oil and gas industry's eligibility for a deduction on income from domestic manufacturing, which was contained in 2004 tax legislation. This will also raise $5 billion, he said.
The plan also aims to correct problems with the federal program that allows royalty waivers for deep water Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production. Deep water leases issued to dozens of companies in 1998 and 1999 were mistakenly drafted without "price thresholds" that end the royalty incentive when oil prices are high.
The package will seek to correct this oversight, although Hoyer said the plan is still being drafted and did not say what the mechanism for ensuring royalty payments from these leases would be. This will raise an additional $9 billion to $11 billion, he said.
Proposals for addressing the problem to date have included denying new offshore leases to companies that refuse to renegotiate the 1998-1999 contracts, and placing a new fee on production from these leases if companies do not agree to the inclusion of price thresholds.
Democratic leaders say the plan will steer the new revenues toward development of alternative energy sources. However, the package will not lay out specific programs that the new revenues must fund, Hoyer told reporters. Representative George Miller (D-CA), a senior member of the House Resources Committee, said in an interview that the royalty relief issues reach far beyond next week's plans. "This thing needs a complete and thorough and exhaustive investigation," he said.
A study from the Interior Department that was not released for over a year but came out in the New York Times in December, showed that despite having some of the most lucrative subsidies of any country in the world for Big Oil, the subsidies actually had minimal impact on increasing oil production. The study further showed that the inducements would cause only a tiny increase in production even if they were offered without some of the limitations now in place. "They are giving up a lot of money and not getting much in return," said Robert A. Speir, a former analyst at the Energy Department who worked on the report. "If they took that money, they could buy a whole lot more oil with it on the open market." The report predicted that the current incentives would lead to the discovery of only 1.1 percent more reserves than if there had been no incentives at all. Total oil production from 2003 to 2042 would be about 300 million barrels more, or less than 1 percent, than it would have been anyway. Natural gas production would be 0.6 percent greater than it would have been otherwise.
Not only do subsidies to Big Oil represent misguided priorities, but it is apparently not even effective.
This vote on the oil subsidies will be the first litmus test of new members of Congress. For too long we have been pumping taxpayer money into an industry that is already the most profitable industry in the history of the world, while cleaner, safer, more sustainable technologies received only lip service and chump change. Rolling back the misguided, ineffective oil subsidies and redirecting the money into alternative technology research will show that Congress is finally getting serious about a new energy future for our country.
POLAR BEARS THREATENED
The US Department of the Interior announced on December 27 that it was recommending that the polar bear be officially listed at "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. Citing the growing body of evidence that receding sea ice threatens the existence of the Arctic bears, Secretary Kempthorne stated "based on current analysis, there are concerns about the effect of receding sea ice on polar bear populations...I am directing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey to aggressively work with the public and the scientific community over the next year to broaden our understanding of what is happening with the species..."
The proposal to officially list the polar bear as "threatened" can be found at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's website.
The proposal to list the polar bear is significant for America's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge because the Refuge is the most important on-shore denning site for polar bears in the United States. Additionally, more polar bears den on the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge than any other place in the country. Some scientists have concluded that if climate change accelerates and the ice shrinks more, the on-shore denning will become even more prevalent. One of the stated purposes of the Endangered Species Act is to "provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved, to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species, and to take such steps as may be appropriate to achieve the purposes of the treaties and conventions set forth in subsection (a) of this section."
The Interior Department's (DOI) decision to propose the listing was the result of a lawsuit filed in 2005 by the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, and NRDC to list the polar bear both as threatened and to designate its denning areas as critical habitat. The polar bear was petitioned to be listed as a threatened species, defined as a species likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future. An endangered species is one that is likely to go extinct within all or a significant portion of its range in the foreseeable future. The legal settlement between Interior and the Environmental groups mandated that Interior submit their proposal no later than December 27.
In the DOI proposal, global warming is listed as the driving force behind the possible decline of the polar bears. The U.S. government is now officially on record as saying that global climate change could conceivably make the polar bear extinct.
Although the proposal to list the polar bear as threatened was submitted officially to the Federal Register at the end of December, it has not been printed in the Register yet. Once the proposal is printed in the Register, it will be available for public comment for 90 days.
ANWR vs. ARCTIC REFUGE: WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Our Opinion (Editor's Note: parts of this article were first sent out as part of AlaskaWild Update #172 from January of 2002)
This debate is as contentious as ever. To quote Shakespeare, does not a rose by any other name still smell as sweet? Yes, but while many people are named Rose after the beautiful flower, if a rose were called stinkweed, there would be less stinkweeds in the world. Names carry with them meaning and substance of the items for which they represent. Imagine if Grand Tetons National Park was merely called GTNP, or if Yellowstone was referred to as YNP? So we arrive back at our current debate: ANWR or Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?
As a name, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a big mouthful to keep saying or especially to keep typing. It is easy to stumble over its pronunciation or spelling, especially after many repeated attempts. It is, however, very descriptive of the place's form, function, and location. It is a wildlife refuge, it is in the Arctic, and perhaps most importantly, the name tells us who owns it by calling it a NATIONAL Refuge (as opposed to an Alaskan State refuge). The name conveys meaning and often conjures up images of mountains, musk ox, and caribou for those who come in contact with that descriptor.
On the other hand, acronyms are small, funny words meant to make a reference to something quickly without having to say the whole thing. They convey no true meaning or images, and to people unfamiliar with the full term, it actually serves to confuse and leaves many feeling like they've missed something. ANWR as an acronym is impersonal and does not create the same images in one's mind of the Arctic Refuge and is a corporate "term" that leaves the listener with no sense of ownership, identity, or warmth. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on the other hand, does all of these things, and is indeed a mouthful nonetheless. Our preference is to shorten it to Arctic Refuge since that is not such a mouthful and still conveys images of snowy peaks, tundra, musk ox, and polar bears.
The best reason to call it the Arctic Refuge instead of ANWR? Big Oil and its supporters in Congress ALL call it ANWR to keep it impersonal and distant. Let’s keep the full name Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and keep reminding people exactly what it is we fight for! No more ANWR! Arctic Refuge all the way!
TAKE ACTION
Please contact your Representative and Senators and enlist their support for protecting all of America’s Arctic Wilderness, the Tongass, Teshekpuk Lake and other special areas of the western arctic. Send a personal note to your Representative or Senator congratulating them on his/her recent victory and urge them to support any legislation that would permanently protect the Coastal Plain of America's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and other special places in Alaska. You can also click here to send an email Wilderness for the Arctic Refuge.