WASHINGTON - The US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee released Friday legislative language that will be voted on next week to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
Giving energy companies access to the refuge's billions of barrels of crude oil is a key part of the Bush administration's national energy plan to boost domestic production and reduce US dependence on imported oil.
The legislative proposal, which is expected to be cleared by the energy panel and then folded into a much bigger budget bill to fund the federal government, calls for oil drilling on ANWR's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain.
However, the maximum area that could be covered by production and support facilities, including airstrips and piers to hold up pipelines, could not exceed 2,000 acres in the entire drilling area.
The refuge, about the size of South Carolina, sprawls across more than 19 million acres in northeastern Alaska.
Republican leaders want to tack the Alaska drilling plan to budget legislation, because under Senate rules the giant spending bill could not be filibustered.
A coalition of most Senate Democrats and a few Republicans in the past successfully blocked opening ANWR when there was an attempt to make the drilling plan part of broader energy legislation.
Under the proposal, the Interior Department would be required to hold two lease sales before Oct. 1, 2010 to lease tracts in ANWR to oil companies. The energy committee is scheduled to vote on the drilling plan next Wednesday.
Opening ANWR would have no impact on replacing the shutdown oil production in the Gulf of Mexico caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
If Congress approved drilling in the Arctic refuge this year, the first oil would not begin flowing until 2015, assuming the government was able to lease the first exploration tracts by 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration.
An estimated 10.4 billion barrels of crude could be recovered from the refuge, according to government figures.
Environmental groups and many Democrats oppose drilling in ANWR, saying Congress should look at ways to reduce oil consumption with more fuel-efficient vehicle standards instead of threatening the habitat of wildlife in the refuge.
Story by Tom Doggett
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
