Now that it has passed legislation supporting the Keystone XL pipeline, Congress should approve oil and gas leasing of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain in Alaska.
The issues are closely related.
The Senate voted 62-36 on Jan. 29 to declare that the Keystone XL project has satisfied all requirements for approval of the border crossing. The House passed a similar bill on Jan. 9.
By connecting Canadian bitumen and Midwestern light oil with the storage hub at Cushing, Okla., and high-conversion refineries on the Gulf Coast, the project would improve transport and processing efficiencies and enhance development of spectacularly promising hydrocarbon resources.
But the border crossing has awaited Executive Branch approval for more than 6 years. President Barack Obama promises to veto legislation demanding action.
Days before the Senate passed its Keystone bill, he called on Congress to make all of the 19-million-acre ANWR, including the coastal plain, federal wilderness. The designation would foreclose exploration and development of the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain-activities that would occupy just 2,000 acres.
It seems not to matter to the president that the bleak coastal plain bears human imprints that should disqualify it from wilderness consideration.
It seems not to matter to him that below its surface lie structures that, if filled, might hold billions of barrels of oil.
It seems not to matter to Obama that development of that resource, if exploration proved successful, could extend the life of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline not far to the west.
With ANWR, as with Keystone XL, Obama is accommodating demands of a small but well-organized constituency committed to foreclosing new supplies of hydrocarbon energy and promoting costlier alternatives.
The potential greatly to expand oil supply is what links these projects and makes them targets of condemnation-not to mention fund-raising-by activists and their emissary in the White House.
The conflict is about this, not caribou in Alaska or aquifers in Nebraska.
Congress should make clear to Americans what's really at stake.