"I want to see it for myself so that before I cast a vote I can say 'I have seen this and it is in fact not magnificent wildlife habitat,' " the Utah Republican said Thursday. He made the comment as he prepared to join a delegation including Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman visiting the 19 million-acre preserve that is the battleground for one of America's most prominent environmental debates.
Beneath the untouched wilderness landscape dotted with caribou, musk oxen and polar bear is enough oil to meet Utah's petroleum needs for the next 218 years, said Norton. The Bush administration believes that new drilling technology combined with strict regulations can protect the environment while still extracting the 10.4 billion barrels the U.S. Geological Survey estimates are underground.
"We can produce energy from ANWR with no significant [environmental] impact," she said.
Past attempts in Congress to authorize leasing oil-exploration permits on a 1.5 million acre coastal plain of ANWR have failed to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome Democratic-led filibusters. But Senate Republicans are taking another approach, trying to insert ANWR leasing language into the congressional budget resolution, which cannot be filibustered.
That tactic would mean a simple majority of 51 Senate votes are needed to authorize drilling ANWR, and Bennett, a member of GOP leadership, said "everyone is feeling optimistic because we think we have the 51 votes."
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, defended the procedural end-run to open ANWR to oil exploration.
"If Americans are interested in passing something as important as this, we are saying there is a process, nothing illegal, that says if you do it this way, those who oppose it will be in the same boat as those who favor it," he said.
With gasoline futures hitting an all-time high Thursday and oil prices nearing last October's record price, Bennett said the need for ANWR's oil reserve has less to do with supply and more to do with availability in a stable political environment.
"It will be a tremendous boon to the American economy and to the world economy to say that a pool of oil this large is not going to be disrupted by a coup in Venezuela, it's not going to disrupted by problems with the Saudi royal family, it's not going to be disrupted by insurgents attacking oil fields in Iraq," he said.
Environmentalists said since only senators supporting ANWR drilling are going to Alaska and since snow will cover the landscape, this weekend's trip is merely a staged photo opportunity on the taxpayers' dime.
"I am troubled that drilling proponents plan to bring senators and other decision-makers to the refuge this time of year to sow only one point of view," Mahsi Choo, leader of a group of Alaska natives who live along caribou migration paths to the refuge, wrote to senators planning to visit.
"To see the wilderness and wildlife aspects one must come during the proper season, which would be in the summer months."
