WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House voted Thursday to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development, but the move was primarily symbolic, since even drilling proponents concede the bill can't get through the Senate.
The vote was 225-201. It was, by some counts, the 12th such House vote in recent years, and the debate preceding it came off like a play left too long on Broadway: predictable, and with passion gone stale after too much rehearsal.
Pro-drilling lawmakers said the refuge could produce 1 million barrels a day, about what we import from Saudi Arabia, for 30 years. Opponents said ANWR doesn't hold enough oil to solve America's energy problem and would only reduce gas prices a penny a gallon.
"This is like addressing the pimple on the cheek of an elephant," said Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., "when the problem is the whole elephant."
It was one of the few fresh lines in the script. The bill could theoretically go to the Senate next. Democrats there would undoubtedly block it, and Republicans are a few votes short of the 60 they need to break a filibuster.
But House Republicans wanted to return to their districts for Memorial Day able to say they had acted on energy legislation before the summer vacation season begins.
"It's an election year, isn't it?" Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., remarked.
The drilling measure is the first in a series of energy proposals expected to appear in coming weeks, now that pump prices have become a campaign issue in the battle for control of Congress. Both parties have stepped up efforts to highlight their differences on energy policy.
The battle to open ANWR will continue, regardless of how the bill passed by the House on Thursday fares.
"The plan for us is still to look to the budget process," said Kevin Sweeney, spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
If ANWR is added to a budget reconciliation bill, its chances in the Senate are better. Senate rules don't allow filibusters on budget bills, so it needs only 51 votes to pass.
That was the Alaska delegations' ANWR plan last year, but then it was the House that balked. This year, Sweeney said, the strategy is more promising because the budget bill won't be loaded with unpopular spending cuts as it was in 2005.
Sweeney said the House vote bodes well for the next ANWR round and shows that a majority of both houses support responsible oil development.
In Thursday's debate, the two sides replayed the dispute over Arctic adjectives -- whether the area to be drilled is a "pristine wilderness" or, as Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., put it, "just a barren slope."
Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said gas wouldn't be so high today if ANWR was in production now. He scoffed at the notion that America should kick its fossil fuel habit.
"Let's everybody buy a bicycle," Young said. "Let's all buy a bicycle and break our leg, and let's go back to being China. And by the way, who's the largest consumer of automobiles today? It's China, not us, China. They also -- and some may take me to task -- they say (the Chinese) don't burn much fuel. They burn over 7 billion barrels of oil a year."
China, according the U.S. Energy Information Administration, burns 7 million barrels of oil a day, which comes to 2.6 billion barrels a year. China was the world's third largest automobile market last year, Businessweek reported in March, after the United States and Japan.
Young's spokeswoman, Meredith Kenny, said the Congressional Record will show he said 7 million, not billion. The Congressional Record, printed daily, allows lawmakers to edit the transcript of their remarks before publication.
"His point was that China is a huge growing economy which is threatening our place in the world," Kenny said.
Reporter Liz Ruskin can be reached at lruskin@adn.com. Some information in this story came from The Los Angeles Times.
