Top Senate-House Republican negotiators decided to include the highly contentious issue of energy development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as part of the latest “discussion draft” on broad energy legislation, which was issued Monday.

The GOP-crafted discussion draft adopts the House energy bill’s language that calls for a small portion of the coastal region of ANWR to be opened to oil and natural gas exploration and development, as well as includes provisions on coal leasing and hydroelectric power. Republican and Democratic negotiators are scheduled to meet Tuesday to review the draft initiatives.

While ANWR is considered a critical component of the energy bill, many in the natural gas industry appear to be more eagerly awaiting the negotiators’ proposals addressing land access and tax incentives for producers, gas price transparency, liquefied natural gas (LNG) development and gas-related regulatory issues, which some observers expect to be released later in the week.

Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans have threatened to filibuster any energy bill that incorporates ANWR. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), chairman of the committee that is negotiating the differences in the House and Senate energy measures, advocates opening part of ANWR to drilling, but he has said he will strike the issue if it threatens Senate passage of comprehensive energy legislation.

If there aren’t the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster, “we will probably have to pull it [ANWR] out” of the final conference report on the energy bill, said Marnie Funk, spokeswoman for the Republican members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Between now and the hour when that decision must be made, I will work relentlessly for those votes,” Domenici said, noting that ANWR is the “right thing to do.”

Given the strong bipartisan support for a number of other issues in the energy bill– such as tax credits, electricity reliability and increased energy assistance for low-income families — Domenici believes there may be a “strong chance to defeat the filibuster” on ANWR, Funk noted. In addition, Domenici said he was counting on the “will of the American people,” who have endured price spikes in gasoline and natural gas and a massive electricity blackout this year, to “bring us the ANWR votes.”

Domenici’s prediction of a favorable ANWR vote may prove to be on target, given that the gap between the proponents and opponents of ANWR in the Senate appears to have narrowed a little. In the Senate’s last vote on ANWR in March, opponents successfully defeated a GOP proposal to develop the Arctic refuge, but only by a four-vote margin (see NGI’s Daily Gas Price Index, March 20). The vote was 52 to 48.

In anticipation of the pro-ANWR discussion draft, more than 40 senators last week sent letters to energy bill negotiators expressing their objections to energy development in the Alaska refuge.

The decision to include ANWR in the discussion draft followed a meeting between negotiators and President Bush last week. But Bush, a strong supporter of ANWR development, did not influence the move, Funk said.

“This is something that Domenici has wanted to do all along,” she told NGI.

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