Oil drilling plan in Arctic refuge rejected

WASHINGTON -- The Senate rejected by a wide margin President Bush's plans for oil drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge Thursday, turning aside arguments that the oil was needed for the nation's security.

The vote was a blow to the administration, which repeatedly has cited development of the Alaska refuge's oil as a centerpiece of its energy policy.

Environmentalists waged an intense campaign to protect the refuge, calling it a unique ecological treasure. Drilling supporters said their proposal contained environmental safeguards.

While the House already has approved legislation to allow development of the oil-saturated coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the size of the anti-drilling vote in the Senate may doom any prospect for a drilling measure in Congress this year.

Senate Republicans fell 14 votes short, 54-46, of the 60 needed to break a Democratic filibuster and allow a vote on putting the refuge provision into a broader energy bill.

Alaska's two senators, who had led the fight for drilling, expressed disappointment but did not formally withdraw their amendment.

"It's not over yet," insisted Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska. He and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told reporters they planned still other amendments involving the refuge but gave no details.

Missouri's senators, Republican Kit Bond and Democrat Jean Carnahan, split along party lines.

"The most optimistic estimates show that oil from ANWR won't be available for nearly a decade," Carnahan said, explaining her vote.

Bond said the vote played into the hands of Iraq leader Saddam Hussein. Iraq produces about 2.3 million barrels a day, with the United States importing about a third of that.

"In essence, today's vote means we are going to keep paying for the bullets and missiles Saddam uses against our troops," Bond said.

Democrats said the vote settles the drilling issue, and Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi said he expects the amendment to be withdrawn so the Senate can go ahead and pass an energy bill.

Majority leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said he hopes to wrap up the energy bill next week, more than a month after the Senate began work on it.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said President Bush would continue to fight for opening the refuge to oil development when the matter comes up in negotiations between the House and Senate on a final energy package.

Fleischer sidestepped a question whether Bush would sign an energy bill that does not include drilling in the refuge. The Senate "missed an opportunity to lead America to greater energy independence," he said.

Eight Republicans and Sen. James Jeffords, the independent from Vermont, joined most Democrats in opposing the drilling measure. Five Democrats supported the drilling amendment, offered by the Alaska senators.

Stevens blamed the defeat on senators who succumbed to pressure from "reactionary, radical environmentalists" and ignored the jobs that drilling in the refuge would produce.

Some Democrats rejected the national security argument and maintained that had drilling proponents wanted to dampen oil imports, they should have approved increases in automobile fuel economy.

Last month the Senate, by a 63-38 vote, stripped from the energy bill a requirement for automakers to boost fuel economy. The fuel economy increase "would have saved as much oil in three years as is likely to be economically developed in the refuge," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

How much oil is in the refuge is unclear since only one exploratory well has been drilled, on private land within the coastal plain, and its results have been kept secret. Federal geologists believe from seismic studies in the 1980s that the area, just east of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, could yield from 5.7 billion to 11.6 billion barrels of oil. Ten years of preliminary work would be required before production could begin.

The Prudhoe Bay field has produced about 13 billion barrels, and the United States consumes about 19 million barrels a day, 57 percent of it imported.