In his opening volley to the Senate debate on energy legislation, Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK) said Senate Majority Tom Daschle (D-SD) will be entirely to blame if controversial proposals to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and natural gas drilling go up in flames.

“If it’s dead…Tom Daschle killed it [ANWR],” Murkowski said Tuesday, as the Senate began its consideration of the 539-page Democratic energy bill (S. 517). On Sunday, Daschle declared that ANWR was “at least, right now” a dead issue in the Senate because proponents lacked the 60 votes needed to bring it to the floor for a vote.

A proposal to allow ANWR drilling is conspicuously absent from the bill before the Senate, but Murkowski and other Republicans are expected to make a concerted push to change that. The White House said Tuesday it had “serious concerns” about S. 517, and urged the Senate to revise the bill to “to bring it more closely into conformance” with the administration’s national energy policy. A chief concern, it said, was the bill’s failure to provide for the exploration and development of ANWR.

Murkowski and Daschle exchanged a war of words on the floor over Daschle’s decision last summer to withdraw the energy bill from consideration by the full Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The final bill was crafted and sponsored by Daschle, Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and other Democrats.

“This is not a representative bill,” complained Murkowski. He claimed that Daschle pulled the energy measure because the committee was poised to pass an ANWR amendment. If the bill had stayed in committee, “it would have had ANWR in it. The votes were there,” agreed Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), a committee member. Daschle was “phenomenally fearful” that ANWR would be part of the legislation, he noted. But other senators defended Daschle, noting that he withdrew other bills from committees following Sept. 11.

Bingaman disputed Murkowski’s charge. “The decision to terminate committee markup was made by me [not Daschle] after consultation with the Majority Leader,” he said.

Murkowski warned that the Senate debate over energy will be a prolonged one because of the lack of committee input. “We’re going to begin a long process,” he noted.

In other developments, Bingaman made clear that construction of Alaska pipeline is high on his list of priorities in the energy bill. “I believe it’s important…to be proactive on this project, not simply to sit back and cross our fingers and hope that someday it occurs.” If a long-line pipeline connecting the North Slope of Alaska to the Lower 48 states isn’t built, “we will lose an important opportunity to bolster our energy security in natural gas.”

The Democratic bill would offer $10 billion in loan guarantees to the first “entity” that files an application to build the U.S. leg of the project; calls on the federal government to consider the feasibility of building the pipeline if the private sector fails to come through; seeks expedited processing for permits, rights of way and certificates for the U.S. portion of the line; and may offer tax incentives to reduce the uncertainty of the project’s economics.

Construction of the 3,600-mile pipeline would take approximately eight years “from start to finish,” and would cost between $15-$20 billion, according to Bingaman. He estimated an Alaskan line would provide 4-6 Bcf/d of North Slope gas to the Lower 48 states by the end of the decade.

“We want to rely on the private sector to the greatest extent possible” to build the pipeline, but Bingaman conceded “it’s hard for the free market to take this challenge on by itself” given the wide fluctuations in natural gas prices and the size of the mammoth project. While Bingaman was making his arguments, Exxon Mobil Chairman Lee R. Raymond was telling another forum the cost of the pipeline and the price of gas are unfavorable elements which make a pipeline an unlikely bet anytime in the near future (see related story, this issue).

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