GossipMan

White House Persists in Alaska Oil Fight


By JOHN HEILPRIN
The Associated Press
Saturday, March 29, 2003; 4:01 PM

Rebuffed by the Senate, the Bush administration will not give up the fight this year to open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said Saturday.

The White House is turning its attention to the House in hopes of salvaging a key part of the president's energy strategy. Republicans fell two votes shy in the Senate of passing the legislation that could lead to removal of a 43-year-old ban on developing millions of barrels of oil from the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"We continue to press about ANWR, because that one small spot is believed to have the ability to produce more oil than the entire state of Texas," Norton told people gathered for the National Wildlife Federation's 67th annual meeting.

On Friday, Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who favors developing the refuge's oil, shot down rumors he might push the issue as part of a broad energy bill to be offered by his committee this summer.

"I am not given to subterfuge. No means no," he said.

The House still may revive the issue as part of its energy bill. Norton's Interior Department estimates 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil are in the refuge, enough to produce 1.4 million barrels a day, compared with Texas's 1 million. Opponents argue the refuge feasibly might produce no more than 3.2 billion barrels of oil, depending on the market price.

A common theme among the environmentalists who listened to Norton's speech or questioned her afterward was the worry that President Bush's policies cater to industry and shortchange wildlife such as caribou, musk oxen, polar bears and migrating birds at the Alaska refuge.

"Wildlife refuges ought to be the one place where wildlife interests come first," said Clark Bullard of Urbana, Ill., an engineering professor who helps lead the Prairie Rivers Network environmental group.

Norton said her department is committed to conservation, but tight budgets demand creative thinking and cooperation from refuge neighbors preserving wildlife and their habitats. She also sought to deflect some criticism by pointing to successes of the Environmental Protection Agency and by portraying her boss, the president, as an outdoorsy guy, whose love of clearing brush on his Texas ranch reflects an understanding for the harm that nonnative species of plants and animals can cause by invading other species' natural habitats.

"He is someone who truly enjoys the outdoors. At his ranch in Crawford, Texas, he loves spending his time working with the land," she said. "When I talk with the president about invasive species, he understands firsthand because he manages those issues himself on his own ranch."

Jamie Rappaport Clark, a National Wildlife Federation senior vice president who directed the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service in the Clinton administration, said the Bush administration is best judged by its actions, not its words.

"You hear clear skies, healthy forests, collaboration, cooperation, consultation, all that kind of stuff," Clark said, referring to some of the slogans used by the administration and Norton. "But from my perspective, her actions to date have fallen far short of the responsibilities of the nation's chief wildlife advocate."

Clark said if Norton believed in the law that says federal refuges are places where wildlife comes first, she wouldn't support opening the Alaska refuge to oil drillers.

"That's not a wildlife-comes-first kind of attitude or position," Clark said.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Mar29.html

GossipMan

Official Expounds on Oil Drilling in Alaska
Wildlife Group Cool to Secretary's Ideas

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 30, 2003; Page A10

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is a pristine spot where herds of caribou migrate to give birth, but it is also "believed to be able to produce more oil than the entire state of Texas," Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said yesterday in a speech here at the annual meeting of the National Wildlife Federation.

As Norton endorsed the Bush administration's plans to drill for oil in Alaska, members of the nation's largest wildlife preservation group listened politely. Afterward, they formed 20-person lines behind two microphones to pepper her with questions about protecting the arctic and other reserves.

"We would apply the most stringent environmental standards ever applied anywhere" if Congress were to allow drilling in the refuge, Norton said. She said her department also wants to "heal our landscapes and restore health to our national forests."

Norton said the administration also plans to attack invasive species that are destroying native habitats, and cure wasting diseases that are crippling wildlife. But wildlife federation organizers greeted her message with skepticism.

"It was good of her to come," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, the group's senior vice president for conservation programs. "But the speech was overarching, message spinning. She has to support the administration's position, and the administration's position is not positive for the environment."

Clark said that Norton all but dismissed questions about her vision for protecting wildlife areas, and sidestepped questions about a rollback in funding for the Clean Water Act.

"There was no substance," Clark said. "But let's give them a chance and see what they can do. As I've said before, we have to sleep with both eyes open."

Don Heacock, a member of the Conservation Council for Hawaii, was not as charitable. "On a scale of one to 10," he said of Norton's speech, "I'd give it a one. A gentleman asked her what she would do to protect wildlife refuges, and she only said what she would do outside the refuge."

Heacock especially did not care for Norton's comments about the arctic refuge, "where 85 percent of the caribou calves in the area are born," he said. "That is an absolutely critical biological spot."

Jerome C. Ringo, vice chairman of a federation region that includes Kentucky, Oklahoma and Louisiana, was diplomatic. "We respectfully disagree, as expected," he said. "We don't believe such a sensitive area should be sacrificed. There will be a snowball effect if drilling is allowed in the arctic refuge."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Mar29.html




We need to start drilling in Alaska.. The fucking caribou, give me a fucking break.. Who the hell cares about the damn caribou..