The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday advanced Republican legislation to allow oil and natural gas drilling in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The vote was 13-10 along party lines. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was the only Democrat to support the bill.
A slew of Democratic amendments to the bill failed, as committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, argued about the purpose of the legislation and the process by which Republicans conceived it.
“It really does turn regular order on its head,” Cantwell said of Murkowski’s legislation to permit drilling in a 1.5 million-acre section of the 19.6-million-acre Alaskan refuge, with the expectation that energy development there will raise just over $1 billion over 10 years.
“We are being asked to consider legislation that is different than previous bills [that tried to allow drilling in ANWR], and has not been subject to single hearing. At its core, the [bill] would change current law and turn the refuge into a petroleum reserve.”
“We have given members plenty of time to review the legislation and consider amendments,” Murkowski countered. “This was done in regular order.”
Murkowski’s bill requires the Interior Department to hold at least two lease sales within 10 years of the bill’s passage, the first within four years and the second within seven years. It says that lease sale areas should include at least 400,000 acres with a strong potential for drilling. But surface development would be limited to 2,000 acres of the coastal plain.
It would split in half revenues raised from energy development between Alaska’s state government and the federal government.
Republicans are considering the bill under budget reconciliation, meaning it is not subject to a Senate filibuster and can pass with a simple majority.
The introduction of the bill fulfills the terms of a budget resolution passed by the Republican-controlled House and Senate that directed the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to create legislation to raise $1 billion over a decade to help pay for tax reform.
The bill now heads to Senate Budget Committee to be combined with the tax reform legislation.
Wednesday’s hearing was at times contentious, with Democrats again trying to block drilling in the refuge, as they have successfully done in the past.
Democrats have managed to block those efforts over fears that drilling would harm the ecosystem of what they describe as one of the wildest places left on Earth, inhabited by animals such as polar bears, caribou and arctic foxes.
ANWR was created under former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960. In 1980, Congress provided additional protections to the refuge but set aside the “1002 area” for study and future drilling if lawmakers approved it.
Cantwell argued that Murkowski’s legislation would mandate oil and drilling in that part of the refuge in a manner that has never been done before. No other refuge in America has expressly permitted oil and gas development as part of its purpose, she said.
“No other refuge lists oil and gas development as a purpose,” Cantwell said. “By putting that purpose in, you turn everything on its ear.”
Murkowski said Republicans are simply complying with the 1980 law and aren’t waiving any environmental reviews.
“This is responsible energy development in a small portion of the refuge,” Murkowski said. “When [the refuge] was created, it specifically said this area right here [the 1002 area] is recognized for its potential and if Congress authorizes it, the coastal plane can be developed for oil and gas. We don’t change the purpose for which ANWR itself was created.”
Democrats and environmental groups have expressed doubt that drilling in the refuge can meet Republicans’ expectations of raising $1 billion for the government over 10 years, with low oil prices and steep competition from natural gas.
Some Democratic senators on Wednesday also questioned energy companies’ safety record drilling in Alaska.
Republicans voted down an amendment from Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., that would have required oil companies looking to lease in ANWR to have a 10-year environmental good standing record.
More than 640 oil spills occurred on Alaska’s North Slope between 1995 and 2009, 13 of which were greater than 10,000 gallons, according to Alaskan data cited by Democrats.
But Alaskan politicians are especially eager to tap the refuge because oil production in the state has fallen from more than two million barrels per day in the late 1980s to under a half-million barrels per day — a big deal in a state whose government provides residents an annual check from oil revenue.
