November 11, 2005 After a heated debate to push a contested budget bill through the House of Representatives, late Wednesday night, House Republicans decided to cut a provision enabling drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). They also eliminated a bill that would have let states opt out of the current moratorium on offshore drilling along America’s east and west coasts.
The decision was brought upon by at least 22 moderate Republicans who refused to vote for a bill that included drilling in ANWR.
“There will be no drilling in ANWR,” Charles Bass (R-NH), one of the moderate Republicans who helped remove drilling from the bill, told the Anchorage Daily News late Wednesday night.
In fact, the fight over drilling in Alaska is far from over, for both environmentalists and drilling proponents. The Senate approved a budget bill last week that called to open the Arctic Refuge’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain for drilling in an attempt to make an estimated $2.4 billion in leasing fees. Now, the House and the Senate need to reach a resolution in a conference committee scheduled for later this year.
“This is not necessarily the final victory,” Chuck Clusen, director of the Alaska project for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Outside Online. “Whether the conference will meet quickly or resolve their differences quickly is hard to say.”
Clusen added that since the budget bill passed by a slim margin in the Senate—51 to 48—the Senate could retract their drilling provision in the conference committee.
Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), however, who are both on the House-Senate conference committee, have stated publicly that they will only vote for a final measure if it includes drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
“It is going to be a very difficult conference,” Clusen said on Thursday, “not only because of the Arctic but because of other issues as well.”
The House budget calls for a $54 billion savings over five years by reducing spending in other controversial areas such as Medicaid, child-support enforcement, food stamps, and student loans.
The other bill cut from the House budget was the Ocean State Options Act, introduced by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), which could have enabled oil and natural gas exploration in areas of the Outer Continental Shelf currently closed to development by a decades-old moratorium.
