By a four-vote margin last Wednesday, the Senate fought off a mostly Republican drive to clear the path for future oil and natural gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). It marked the second time in less than a year that the Senate has voted down ANWR energy development, but the margin of victory has slimmed considerably.

By a vote of 52 to 48, the Senate narrowly approved a Democrat-sponsored amendment that struck provisions in the fiscal 2004 budget resolution that would have eased the way for drilling in the coastal region of the Arctic refuge. Supporting the amendment were the majority of Democrats, New England Republicans and Independent Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont.

The vote on the issue was so close that Vice President Dick Cheney was on stand-by in case he had to break a tie.

Senate Democrat leaders mounted a major effort over past weeks to win support for stripping the ANWR-friendly provisions from the budget resolution. They claimed the controversial issue should never have been part of the Senate’s $2.24 trillion budget package for 2004, and that Republicans simply were trying to gain a victory through “back-door” channels.

The budget resolution, which was passed out of the Senate Budget Committee earlier this month, instructed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to report out legislation to decrease overall outlays by $2.15 billion over the next ten years, a move that potentially would lay the groundwork to open the Section 1002 area of ANWR to future oil and gas drilling.

The Senate vote was a major loss for the Bush administration, which has championed ANWR development as part of its national energy policy.

Senate Republicans have long sought to open up a 2,000-acre portion of the coastal region of ANWR, which is located in Northeast Alaska, to leasing and drilling during the winter months, but they have been blocked at every turn by Democrats.

This time around the debate in the Senate turned into a war of words between Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who sponsored the amendment against ANWR development, and Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, a leading advocate of drilling in the Arctic refuge.

Stevens accused senators of turning their backs on a 1980 law, which was signed by then-President Jimmy Carter, that he says dedicated the coastal plain region of ANWR exclusively for oil and gas exploration.

The campaign to pass ANWR was very personal for Stevens. Senators over the years have said “I’ll be with you if you need me [on ANWR]. Well, I need you,” the Alaska senator urged just prior to the vote. “People who vote against this today are voting against me, and I will never forget.” This is “the most important vote in my history in the Senate,” noted the 35-year veteran.

Referring to claims that drilling in ANWR would disturb the environment and caribou herds, Stevens said, “This is propaganda of the worst sort.”

In a message to Californians, he noted, “When the price of [your] gasoline goes up, call Sen. Boxer.”

The only thing Stevens and Boxer could agree on was that the vote on ANWR would be close. “This is a close, close vote,” the California senator said during the debate on the Senate floor. She called on all senators to vote on the issue.

Boxer also was criticized for opposing energy development in a region that she had never visited first-hand. “Many of us [Republicans] have been to ANWR,” said Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-OK). He also accused Boxer and other opponents of ANWR development of departing from a Senate tradition “where we listen to home state senators.”

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) called “arrogant” the claims that ANWR oil would make little difference in reducing the United States’ dependence on foreign oil. “ANWR has more oil than Texas…so I surmise we don’t need the oil from Texas” either, he said.

He noted that oil reserves in Texas in 2000 were estimated at 5.2 billion barrels. In contrast, ANWR reserves range from a low of 5.7 billion barrels to a high of 16 billion barrels, Domenici said.

The U.S. needs the production from both Texas and ANWR. With the U.S. at war with Irag, “the case for Arctic oil gets better and better and better,” he noted.

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