Prospects favorable for Arctic drilling

Environmentalists on verge of losing political battle over refuge

WASHINGTON — Carl Portman remembers watching, heartbroken, from Anchorage in 2005 as a Senate effort to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge lost by two votes. Now, 12 years later, another effort to open up the reserve to oil and gas drilling is working its way through Congress. And this time, the political winds have shifted.

Portman, now a top official of a pro-drilling group, has seen oil revenue improve the schools, roads and hospitals in Alaska, his home state. He said he was cautiously optimistic about the drilling measure, which is included in a sweeping bill to overhaul the tax code.

Environmental activists and their allies in Congress, on the other hand, are on the cusp of forever losing the decades-long political battle over the refuge.

“It is critically important and I don’t think anybody knows it is stuck in a tax bill,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, the Washington Democrat who led the 2005 fight against drilling in the refuge.

The current effort to allow drilling stands the best chance of success in years thanks to a rare alignment of the political stars: Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. The tax bill is critical to the political future of the president and the Republican Party. And, the linchpin: A key role belongs to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who has worked to allow drilling in the refuge her entire career.

The political landscape in Washington also has become more polarized since the last time Arctic drilling was a real possibility. When Cantwell tried to strip the drilling provision out of the budget bill in October, it failed mostly along party line votes. The moment seems certain to be decisive on both sides of the battle.

Drilling proponents see the measure as one of responsible energy development for the good of Alaska and the nation. And, proponents note, every barrel of oil from America is one not purchased from overseas.

For environmental activists, protecting the refuge is about preserving the fragile beauty of the Arctic wilderness, just as the effects of global warming are becoming pronounced in the far north than anywhere else on Earth.

At the heart of the debate, the opposing sides agree, is a clash of values. What is more important: the environment or economic development?

The origins of the battle over the refuge date back decades.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower placed the area under federal protection in 1960. Twenty years later, President Jimmy Carter expanded the refuge and set aside 1.5 million acres between the Brooks Range and the Beaufort Sea — known as the 1002 area, after the provision that created it — to be set aside for the possible study of oil and gas development.

The law left it to Congress to decide whether to allow drilling in the 1002 area, drawing the fault lines that would define the political battle. Since then, successive Republican efforts to open the refuge have failed in Congress or been killed by presidential vetoes.

The closest drilling advocates came to success was in 2005, but Cantwell, who was a freshman senator at the time, mounted a filibuster that ultimately stopped a provision in a military spending authorization that would have opened the refuge.

This time, the decisive role could fall to Murkowski, the chairwoman of the Senate’s energy panel who has introduced legislation to open the Arctic wilderness every term she has served in the chamber.

Even the most ardent opponents of opening the Arctic refuge, often referred to by its acronym ANWR, say they realize this week could mark the moment they definitively lose the legislative battle over drilling. But neither side is ready yet to acknowledge defeat or declare victory.