Anchorage Daily News

WASHINGTON -- Senators opposed to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge appear to still have the votes to keep the oil industry out of that corner of Alaska, and they are pledging to hold firm.

"It's our job to save it. It's fallen to us, and we're willing to fight for it," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Boxer, who has led the charge against ANWR drilling this year, was one of 43 senators who recently sent letters to the committee negotiating the national energy bill, in which she warned them not to burden the bill with the Arctic drilling controversy.

Including ANWR would "seriously derail efforts to bring comprehensive energy legislation to final passage," says the letter sent by 38 Democrats on Tuesday.

Five Republicans signed a separate Sept. 5 letter that also argues against including ANWR.

If all 43 senators stick together, the anti-drilling bloc would have enough votes to sustain a filibuster and effectively kill ANWR legislation, with two votes to spare.

But that's a big if, according to Roger Herrera, the lobbyist for the pro-drilling group Arctic Power.

It's easy for senators to sign a letter opposing ANWR development, he said, but much harder to vote to filibuster a sweeping energy bill that offers big help for their own home states.

"If ANWR is in the bill, then the rubber hits the road, doesn't it?" Herrera said.

Both the House and the Senate have passed energy bills that would provide about $18 billion in energy tax cuts over 10 years. The House bill, though, emphasizes increased domestic oil and gas production while the Senate's concentrates on boosting energy efficiency and the use of alternative and renewable fuels like ethanol.

The House version would also allow drilling on the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge.

A House-Senate conference committee is working on a compromise bill, which may emerge by the end of the month.

The final version will be so loaded with benefits for every part of the country, Herrera said, that senators will be feel compelled to vote for it, no matter what it says about the refuge.

Midwestern senators will accept drilling in ANWR because the bill is a boon for corn growers and the ethanol industry, Herrera predicted, and senators from California and the East Coast will fold for the provisions they want to strengthen the electricity grid.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., another leader of the anti-drilling effort, acknowledged that signing a letter is not the same as an oath to uphold a filibuster on ANWR.

"But it's a significant thing," he said. "The fact that so many senators are willing to (say) it publicly says an awful lot."

Durbin's spokesman, Joe Shoemaker, said drilling opponents will have the strength to filibuster ANWR because then the conference committee will have to bring back an acceptable bill.

"What the filibuster does is, it says remove this provision and then we'll vote for it," Shoemaker said.

In addition to the 43 who signed letters, two other senators -- Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Jim Jeffords, the Vermont independent -- are against ANWR drilling but chose not to sign, Durbin said.

The chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has said that he won't include ANWR in the final bill unless he is convinced that he and other drilling supporters have the necessary 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

Boxer said that's why the number of signatures matters. It shows drilling supporters don't have 60 votes.

Herrera, though, said Domenici won't turn his back on ANWR as easily as he professes.

"He's going to say that, but he's a canny politician and he's not going to follow that rule," Herrera said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, hasn't been demanding that the conference committee include ANWR, as her father, former Sen. Frank Murkowski, did when the energy bill reached this stage last year.

Her spokesman, Chuck Kleeschulte, said she believes it is too soon to say whether ANWR can succeed. She, like Domenici, said earlier this year there's no point in adding ANWR if it kills the bill. She has focused instead on the financial incentives for construction of a trans-Alaska gas pipeline she hopes to see in the final version.

"She feels that getting a gas line provision is the important (thing)," Kleeschulte said.

Congress has been debating what to do with the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge for more than 25 years. Supporters of drilling -- including the Alaska Legislature, which in large part funds Arctic Power's lobbying -- say the area can be developed safely and could be an important source of crude for decades. Environmentalists, though, say development would devastate wildlife to produce a volume of oil that, all told, would be no greater than what the nation consumes every six months.

Reporter Liz Ruskin can be reached at 1-202-383-0007 or lruskin@adn.com.