Anchorage Daily News

U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens on Monday tossed out a new approach for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Make it part of the nation's emergency stockpile of oil.

Click to enlarge

Stevens' plan would add ANWR oil to the nation's 700 million barrels in emergency reserves.

Story tools

Comment on this story

E-mail a friend

Print

Digg this

Seed Newsvine

Send link via AIM

Font size : A | A | A

The idea came up during a nearly hour-long briefing for news reporters in Anchorage. Alaska's senior senator also talked about the war in Iraq, the Alaska gas pipeline and the interim U.S. attorney.

Stevens, wearing a casual brown shirt and no tie, said he was struck by a Sunday column in The Washington Post that analyzed President Bush's call to expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The stockpile consists of about 700 million barrels of federal-government-owned crude stored for a national emergency in huge salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas. The president can release it if commercial oil supplies are disrupted, and it also can be drawn down for other nonemergency reasons.

Stevens said his staff and Sen. Lisa Murkowski's have been reviewing the president's proposal, publicized last month in his State of the Union speech, to buy more oil for the reserve.

"We came up with the thought 'Why not ask that they add ANWR to the petroleum reserve?' And now this op-ed piece says the same thing," Stevens said.

The refuge lies in the northeast corner of Alaska. Its coastal plain is considered the nation's best onshore prospect for a major oil discovery. It also is an area prized by environmentalists nationally. Efforts in Congress to open the coastal plain to oil development have failed repeatedly over the past three decades.

In his column, Gal Luft, head of the energy security think tank Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, said "reframing the issue to cast the refuge as an emergency stockpile rather than a source of production might well change the politics."

Congress could compensate Alaskans by leasing the oil for a set amount of time, after which the state could sell it, Luft said in the column, under the headline "An Oil Reserve Right at Hand."

Alaskans who have tried to open ANWR to drilling said they haven't heard of this new twist but noted that execution would be very complex.

"I don't understand the concept," was the immediate reaction of Roger Herrera, an oil and gas consultant in Anchorage who has been working on ANWR nearly 30 years.

After giving the idea some quick thought, he said that additional exploration likely would be required to confirm the amount of oil in ANWR, and that equipment would need to be in place so that it could be extracted when needed.

Stevens told reporters he thinks the reserve idea may solve the ANWR issue.

"It is in the national interest to produce from ANWR and certainly by the time we could get it ready to produce it would be a ready reserve," Stevens said.

Stevens also talked about:

ALASKA'S NEW U.S. ATTORNEY

The Bush administration's appointment of interim U.S. Attorney Nelson Cohen bypassed the normal route in which the president nominates a candidate who is then confirmed by the Senate. Instead, the U.S. attorney general plucked Cohen from Pennsylvania in August and put him into the Alaska job indefinitely. It was done under a little-known provision of the U.S. Patriot Act, Stevens said.

The move upset the senator, who had proposed Alaskan candidates, but he didn't try to undo it. Nine days after the appointment, the FBI raided the offices of six state legislators, including Stevens' son, Ben.

"Because of the circumstance of the investigation, I did not want to get involved. With my son's name involved, that just would not have been proper," Stevens said.

He wasn't sure if Cohen's appointment was related to the investigation, but it was in the "back of my mind."

In the last week, Stevens said, he discussed the appointment with other senators. The same thing has happened in other states, and it skews the balance of power, he said. They likely are going to try to change the law to prevent such indefinite appointments. Stevens said he had nothing against Cohen. "He's just doing his job. He's a career prosecutor."

ALASKA'S GAS PIPELINE

Stevens said he's not happy with the progress on the project and wants a partnership with the federal government, Alaska and Canada.

He plans to meet with Gov. Sarah Palin next week in Washington, D.C.

"I'm planning to listen to her," Stevens said. "Senators don't tell governors what to do and vice versa.

THE WAR IN IRAQ

He supports the troop surge being pushed by Bush and was among the Senate Republicans on Saturday who blocked a vote on a resolution opposing the troop buildup.

"If we left right now there would be anarchy," Stevens said. "That government could not survive."

Democrats in Congress want to make the Iraq war seem like "Vietnam all over again," Stevens said. He said it's nothing like Vietnam.

"They have a democracy. The question is: Can they defend it themselves?" Stevens said.

The surge is necessary for security as more areas are turned over to Iraqi control, the senator said. He gave reporters maps of Iraq showing where the Iraqi army and the national police had lead responsibility for counter-insurgency in May 2006 compared to now. Iraq is now responsible for much more, according to the maps.

If the troop buildup fails, Stevens said he's not sure of the answer.

Daily News reporter Lisa Demer can be reached at ldemer@adn.com.