By Michael Hoyer

March 20, 2003 A 52-to-48 vote in the U.S. Senate yesterday determined that Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will not be opened to oil drilling anytime soon. The latest round of this session's hardest fought battle closed in favor of an amendment striking the 2004 budget provision which would have opened ANWR's coastal plain to oil exploration.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D.,CA), proposed the Boxer-Chafee Amendment to the 2004 budget resolution that prevents consideration of drilling ANWR in a fast-track budget reconciliation bill.

The bitter dispute over Area 1002—the 1.5-million-acre portion of ANWR's coastal plain where drilling proponents hoped to find oil—was exacerbated in recent months by public concern about the availability of foreign oil in the event of a Middle East war. Oil-drilling advocates hoped to decrease reliance on imported fuel by utilizing the refuge's natural resources, but drilling opponents doubted that quantities of oil harvested from the refuge would be plentiful enough to ameliorate America's oil shortage, and argued that oil procured from ANWR would be unavailable for use until nearly a decade from now.

"This is the second significant vote on this issue in the last twelve months," said Athan Manuel, Arctic Wilderness Campaign Director at the non-profit advocacy group, Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). "I hope that [those in favor of drilling] will finally get the message, stop being so aggressive on this and recognize that this area should be off limits."

The Bush administration and pro-drilling camp attempted to open the now-restricted ANWR to oil interests by attaching the provision to the federal budget. With this strategy, they hoped to avoid a democratic filibuster and lower the number of votes necessary to pass the measure from 60 to 50.


Last week, Republicans believed that they were a single vote away from passing the provision to open ANWR to drilling, but they were unable to sway any of the formerly undecided congressmen to the pro-drilling camp. The New York Times reported today that, according to Senate officials, lobby efforts included guaranteeing key Senate Republicans sizable investments in companies pursuing new energy sources in exchange for their votes.

But, despite the heavy GOP lobbying, each of the four senators targeted—Republicans Norm Coleman and Gordon Smith, and Democrats Blanch Lambert Lincoln and Mark Pryor—joined the other 6 Republicans, 41 Democrats, and Vermont's Independent Jim Jeffords in voting for Boxer's amendment.

"I am very pleased that we were able to pass this amendment and prevent the Administration's push to open the pristine wilderness of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration," Boxer said. "We have defeated similar proposals in the past, and I am pleased that as a bipartisan group we have stood firm in our resolve to protect the Refuge."

The vote was an important one in the ongoing battle over ANWR. The defeat of the budget provision and the introduction of the Boxer-Chafee Amendment ensure that future efforts by drilling supporters must once again be presented as a bill, subject to filibuster, that would require 60 votes to pass.

Minutes before the vote, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee Ted Stevens (Rep. Sen., AK) one of the main advocates for opening ANWR, issued a final warning: "People who vote against this today are voting against me," Stevens said, "and I will not forget it."

A post-vote statement by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's second Republican, suggested that Americans in the Lower 48 care more about caribou than jobs for Alaskans: "We talk about the caribou and we are concerned about the caribou and we care for the wildlife," Murkowski told reporters, "But the fact is, you have to have money to buy your kids shoes and put food on the table, and only jobs can provide that."

But the limited scientific evidence available—from a 1984 test drill and U.S. Geological Survey estimates—hints that drilling in ANWR would prove extremely costly, and that there is a 95 percent chance it would yield a mere 4.3 billion barrels of crude. America consumes a whopping 20 million barrels of oil a day.

"You can make a good case that there's no economically recoverable oil there, none." Manuel explains. "Even if there is some, it's not going to solve our energy problems."

"We control 2 percent of the world's energy resources and account for 25 percent of the world's energy consumption," Manuel continues. "We will never become energy dependent. What we need to do is focus on reducing consumption and cultivating renewable energy sources. That's feasible and really the path to energy independence."

Alaska's state government had hoped that last fall's shift to a Republican-controlled Congress would finally resolve the dispute over ANWR's Area 1002 in their favor.

Although Stevens's words didn't dissuade anti-drilling voters this time, he vowed not to rest on this, the issue he deems the most important of his 32-year Senate career. "It's never decided until we win," he told the press.

But Stevens and the other angry Senators don't intimidate Manuel: "This is a done deal in the Senate," he said. "I don't expect any of our supporters to change their position, these folks are pretty locked. The next battleground is clearly the House."

See images of ANWR's wildlife and geographic beauty in our online gallery of photographs by Subhankar Banerjee.