WATCHING WASHINGTON THE ANWR LEASING ISSUE

with Patrick Crow There are no signs in Congress that confrontation will turn into compromise on the issue of leasing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain. The current tactic, wrapping ANWR leasing in the flag of a National Energy Strategy (NES), appears not to be working. Energy Sec. James Watkins and Interior Sec. Manuel Lujan have said the president should veto an NES bill without ANWR leasing because it would amount to half an energy policy.

April 29, 1991

3 min read

There are no signs in Congress that confrontation will turn into compromise on the issue of leasing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain.

The current tactic, wrapping ANWR leasing in the flag of a National Energy Strategy (NES), appears not to be working.

Energy Sec. James Watkins and Interior Sec. Manuel Lujan have said the president should veto an NES bill without ANWR leasing because it would amount to half an energy policy.

JOHNSTON-WALLOP BILL

Sens. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) and Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.) cleverly crafted their NES bill to use ANWR revenues to fund conservation programs environmental groups want.

That legislation may pass the Senate energy committee in May, but the Senate floor is another matter.

Twenty senators, an unusually large number, have cosigned an anti-ANWR leasing bill authored by Sen. Bill Roth (R-Del.).

A recent Senate environment committee hearing on Roth's bill showed both sides remain intransigent on ANWR.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said industry's pledge to explore ANWR without environmental damage is "a promise that cannot be kept. I reject a policy that would sacrifice one of the five greatest places on earth for 6 months of oil."

Gaylord Nelson, a former senator and now with the Wilderness Society, said, "The Coastal Plain is a vital part of ANWR, which stands alone as a unique, unspoiled arctic ecosystem. No place in the entire Northern Hemisphere can compare with it.

"Do we want to save this rare and remarkable ecosystem with its unique and abundant mix of wildlife in its perfectly natural condition for its intrinsic, esthetic, scientific, and philosophic values, or do we want to compromise it for its transitory commercial values?"

Alaska's senators bitterly attacked the Roth bill. Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alas.) vented frustration about "gross, crass, inaccurate statements" regarding ANWR leasing.

He argued the reserve is no ecological utopia. Because of the harsh arctic environment, it has less biological diversity than other areas of Alaska.

He said only "a very elite group" of about 150 persons/year who can afford $5,000/trip visit the reserve.

Sen. Ted Stephens (R-Alas.) said, "ANWR is not America's last great wilderness, as environmentalists would have you believe. It's just one of dozens of wilderness areas in Alaska. This is not the last great pristine arctic ecosystem on earth. That's the product of Gaylord Nelson's crowd."

Roger Herrera, with BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., explained how the oil industry has improved its arctic drilling methods to reduce environmental disruption. With exploration, he said, would come environmental monitoring (not currently performed) and revenues to protect wildlife.

"The alternative of creating wilderness leaves the area to the vagaries of nature, which in the arctic has a harsher hand than the hand of man," Herrera said.

HOUSE INACTION

The House of Representatives has not considered ANWR legislation the past two sessions of Congress because leasing opponents dominate the interior committee.

Last week Morris Udall (D-Ariz.), chairman of the committee for 14 years, said he will retire May 4 due to illness.

But that won't change things. The new chairman will be Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who is even more zealously opposed to ANWR exploration than Udall is.