"It was so close, it was going to open, then they fought hard enough and it stayed closed and our prayers are answered," said Margorie Gemmill, an environmental technician for the Arctic Village Council, a tribal council of Gwich'in Athabascans.
Backers of the ANWR provision could not muster enough votes on the U.S. Senate floor Wednesday to stop a Democrat-led filibuster, effectively ending for now the push to allow drilling in the refuge.
The state's congressional delegation, led by Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, has tried for 25 years to open the coastal plain of the refuge and tap into its estimated 10 billion barrels of oil. Backers say the oil can be withdrawn without major impacts to the environment and it would lessen the nation's dependence on foreign oil.
It's particularly important to Alaska's treasury. Forecasters say oil royalties and taxes will account for at least 75 percent of the state's unrestricted general purpose revenue through 2011. With North Slope oil fields like Prudhoe Bay in decline, ANWR oil would provide a boost to the state's general fund.
Gov. Frank Murkowski was traveling Wednesday and was not available for comment, said his press secretary, Becky Hultberg. But his office released a statement that said special-interest groups had distorted the environmental effects of drilling in ANWR.
"ANWR is a safe, secure, domestic supply of oil for our nation. It can be developed responsibly, using the most advanced environmental safeguards that ever governed oil development anywhere in the world," the statement read. "This vote sends the world the message that the U.S. supports the production of that oil from areas that lack strong environmental protections and from regions that pose potential threats to our national security."
But Alaska Natives like Gemmill living just south of ANWR fear that opening even the coastal plain to drilling would hurt the Porcupine caribou herd they depend on for their subsistence lifestyle.
Arctic Village, population 146, lies on the southern border of the refuge, far from the proposed drilling sites. But, Gemmill said, the roaming caribou have gone to the coastal plain for thousands of years to calve, and would be disrupted by drilling.
She acknowledges that the fight over ANWR will continue, as it already has for decades. However, she is optimistic the outcome will be the same.
"I think as long as the environmentalists and the Gwich'in keep up the work that they're doing to keep it closed, I think it will just hopefully remain closed," she said.
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