A stand-alone bill to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas drilling passed the U.S. House Thursday on a vote of 225 to 201.

The legislation was introduced last week by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) as HR 5429, the American-Made Energy and Good Jobs Act. It’s intent is to open 2,000 acres of ANWR to energy production. This is about the dozenth time ANWR legislation has come before the House. Unlike previous ANWR bills approved by the House, this one contains no other provisions. The only provision is to allow leasing in ANWR.

“There is no logical reason to oppose safe energy exploration and production on ANWR’s northern coastal plain,” House Resources Committee Chairman Pombo said in a statement last week. “It is not a silver bullet solution to America’s energy problems, but it represents one of the biggest pieces to the simple supply-and-demand equation that seems to have puzzled Washington liberals for more than a decade.”

Legislation to open ANWR to drilling is given slim odds in the Senate where several senators have vowed a filibuster of any ANWR drilling bills.

Twenty-seven Democrats voted in favor of the bill. But Thursday’s House debate broke down along party lines almost exclusively, with a few exceptions. House Democrats who spoke in favor of the bill and their Republican colleagues who spoke in opposition were generally the most articulate speakers to take the floor.

Like a couple of other speakers, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) seized on President Bush’s now famous declaration of America’s oil addiction, when he spoke out against drilling in ANWR, an area set aside by “radical environmentalist” Dwight David Eisenhower. Boehlert said that if Congress had not blocked tightening of corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards 11 years ago, the nation wouldn’t be in the oil fix where it now finds itself.

Texas Democrat Gene Green spoke in favor of the bill, noting that it only affects 2,000 acres out of the 1.5 million that comprise ANWR. “It’s true that passing this bill will not lower gas prices immediately, but in the medium term it will. If we had opened [ANWR] in 2000 and 2001 that production would have helped us when the Gulf of Mexico was shut down because of [hurricanes] Katrina and Rita.”

After about an hour of debate on the House floor, ANWR drilling opponent Rep. George Miller (D-CA) introduced an amendment to the bill that he said would exclude from ANWR leases any producer that has “exploited” a controversial loophole in Gulf of Mexico royalty relief rules that came to light earlier this year (see Daily GPI, March 30). Miller called the situation a “royalty holiday” for producers and said his amendment would prevent the government from “getting fleeced twice” by the oil companies.

Pombo, noting that even Miller had conceded that the amendment had nothing to do with ANWR specifically, called it a “cynical attempt to kill” his ANWR legislation.

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