ANWR drilling likely a nonissue

"It's not a death blow," said Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, of his party's losses in both the House and the Senate. "It's a question of whether the votes are there. Right now, they're not there."

With Democrats in charge, oil drilling in the refuge, which Stevens has championed for decades, will not be seriously considered for at least the next two years, according to congressional observers.

"Nobody got elected in this Congress because they wanted to drill more," said Anna Aurilio, legislative director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

National environmental groups noted that drilling in ANWR has been effectively stopped. Some drilling supporters, like California Republican Rep. Richard Pombo, the House Resources Committee chairman, were defeated.

Mike Daulton, the National Audubon Society's conservation policy director, said however, that his group and others will be working to protect the Teshekpuk Lake area in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Some say the Democratic majority, however, won't be able to pass an ANWR wilderness protection bill, just as the Republican majority proved too slim to open the refuge to drilling.

"The procedural protections that were available to people that opposed ANWR development are now available to the people that support ANWR development," said John Katz, director of Gov. Frank Murkowski's office in Washington, D.C.

Democrats opposed to drilling have relied heavily on those procedural protections. Although Republicans controlled Congress and the executive office during the past six years, ANWR leasing legislation languished in part because Democratic senators mounted a successful filibuster and Republicans couldn't round up the 60 votes needed to overcome it.

Katz said the state should not give up pushing for drilling and, for now, could at least keep the issue alive through what he called a "low-level education campaign."

"We want members of Congress to be educated about the importance of ANWR in the nation's domestic energy policy," Katz said. "Second, we want to have a counterpoise to any effort by the environmental community to propose statutory wilderness for ANWR."

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said he plans to introduce an ANWR leasing bill next year, as he always does. He acknowledged, however, that it likely wouldn't go far.