[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 28, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1702-S1704]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. LIEBERMAN (for himself, Mr. Jeffords, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. 
        Feingold, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Wellstone, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Corzine, 
        Mr. Leahy, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Kohl, Mr. Sarbanes, Mr. Edwards, Mr. 
        Torricelli, Mr. Harkin, Mr. Reed, Mr. Biden, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. 
        Durbin, Ms. Stabenow, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Graham, and 
        Mr. Wyden):
  S. 411. A bill to designate a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge as wilderness; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased today to introduce, along 
with 23 of my colleagues, legislation to protect forever the Arctic 
National Wildlife Refuge from oil exploration and other potentially 
harmful development. Our legislation will bequeath, undisturbed, the 
vital heart of America's greatest, most pristine wilderness ecosystem 
and wildlife sanctuary to future generations.
  Advocates of drilling offer the Refuge as a quick fix for our 
country's energy woes and a long-term solution to our debilitating 
dependence on foreign oil. It is neither.
  Proponents of drilling argue that there is a princely sum of black 
gold lying beneath the Refuge. But not according to the scientific 
experts of the U.S. Geological Survey, who in a 1998 study determined 
that a six to eight-month supply of oil would likely be recovered from 
the Refuge over its 50-year lifespan because most of the oil there is 
simply too expensive to extract. This is not the low end estimate; it 
is the most likely one. And not a drop of oil would emerge from ANWR 
for about 10 years. This is hardly the answer to our energy needs, now 
or in the future.
  In fact, the only thing we know for certain about drilling in the 
Refuge, as a result of years of analysis and experience, is that it 
would immeasurably and irreversibly damage one of the last preserves of 
its kind in the world. To drill for oil in the Arctic Refuge is like 
chopping down the California Redwoods for firewood, or capping Old 
Faithful for geothermal power, or damming the Grand Canyon for 
hydroelectric power, unthinkable acts because the cost in lost natural 
treasures is obviously too high.
  To judge the environmental threat, listen to the ecologists and 
biologists who have extensively studied the impact of drilling, not to 
the politicians. Scientific analyses by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife 
Service have concluded that drilling would severely harm the refuge's 
abundant populations of caribou, polar bears, musk oxen, and snow 
geese.
  Advocates of drilling claim that these concerns are grossly 
exaggerated because drilling would only impact an area the size of an 
airport. But what they don't tell you is that this ``airport'' has 
terminals outside that spread all over the Refuge. A spider web of 
infrastructure, including hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines, 
production facilities, ports, and housing and services for thousands of 
people would be required. As was recently said on ``60 Minutes,'' it 
would be ``urban sprawl on the tundra.''
  The probable environmental consequences of drilling also go well 
beyond the animals of the North Slope. The Trans-Alaska and Prudhoe Bay 
oil fields have averaged more than 400 spills a year of everything from 
crude oil to acid, including an oil spill of approximately 9,000 
barrels just last week. Current oil operations on Alaska's North Slope 
emit tons of harmful pollutants every year which cause smog and acid 
rain and contribute to global warming.
  And that gets to the larger point. We have a long-term energy problem 
in America, but drilling in the Arctic Refuge will not help solve it. 
In fact, drilling in the Arctic deludes us into thinking we can oil-
produce our way out of our energy problem. We can't because nature has 
left us with too little oil within our control to meet our needs. We 
must draw what we can from our own resources in an environmentally-
protective way.
  But, in the end, that will not be enough. To become more energy 
independent and environmentally-protective, we must also conserve, we 
must be more efficient, use alternative energy sources and rapidly 
develop new technologies like fuel cells.
  That is why we want to protect the Arctic Refuge, and why we will 
fight all attempts to drill there for oil with any legislative weapon 
we possess, including a filibuster in the Senate.
  In short, for the sake of America's energy and environmental future, 
we are once again today drawing a line in the Arctic tundra. We will do 
everything necessary to protect it.
  I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

[[Page S1703]]

                                 S. 411

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. DESIGNATION OF PORTION OF ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE 
                   REFUGE AS WILDERNESS.

       Section 4 of the National Wildlife Refuge System 
     Administration Act of 1966 (16 U.S.C. 668dd) is amended by 
     adding at the end the following:
       ``(p) Designation of Certain Land as Wilderness.--
     Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, a portion of 
     the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska comprising 
     approximately 1,559,538 acres, as generally depicted on a map 
     entitled `Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--1002 Area. 
     Alternative E--Wilderness Designation, October 28, 1991' and 
     available for inspection in the offices of the Secretary, is 
     designated as a component of the National Wilderness 
     Preservation System under the Wilderness Act (16 U.S.C. 1131 
     et seq.).''.

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I have joined with the Senior Senator 
from Connecticut, Mr. Lieberman, as a co-sponsor of legislation he has 
introduced today to designate the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge as 
a wilderness area. I have been a co-sponsor of this bill since I became 
a member of this body. I am concerned that Congress will be forced to 
consider whether or not to drill on the coastal plain of the Refuge 
before we take substantive action about whether or not the area should 
be designated as wilderness. Establishment of drilling on the coastal 
plain would be allowing a use on the coastal plain that is generally 
considered to be incompatible with areas designated as wilderness under 
the Wilderness Act. I want my colleagues to be aware that this is the 
situation, and that we are not going to increase the supply of oil in 
the near term, or reduce today's high gasoline or other high energy 
prices by drilling in the Refuge. I fear that drilling in the Refuge is 
being promoted not to help us address our current energy situation. As 
a member of Budget Committee I fear that this idea is again being 
proposed so that we can reaping the revenue from the leasing of the 
coastal plain so that we can entertain large tax cuts.
  Second, I oppose drilling in the Refuge because it does not advance 
our domestic energy security. I cannot believe that the American people 
want energy security at the expense of the protection of a substantial 
asset such as the Arctic Refuge's coastal plain. I stand ready to work 
to find other sources of energy, to use existing sources more 
efficiently, to address consumption and to promote sustainable sources.
  Third, I oppose drilling in the Refuge because of its potential 
impact upon existing wilderness, that's right existing wilderness which 
has already been designated in the Arctic Refuge. East of the coastal 
plain are 8 million acres that have already been designated as 
wilderness. We have had very little discussion about the impact of 
drilling in the Refuge on areas we have already designated and I want 
colleagues to be aware that the drilling question threatens not only 
our ability to make future wilderness designations in the Refuge but 
also could endanger areas that we believed had already protected in the 
public trust.
  I want to speak today specifically to colleagues who may be 
considering the potential of possible oil discoveries in the Arctic 
National Wildlife Refuge in light of current high oil prices. 
Colleagues should keep in mind that the Senate's consideration of the 
coastal plain as a source of oil is not triggered by any new 
developments or changes in the geology or economics that affect 
potential development of Arctic resources. The United States Geological 
Survey has already re-considered those factors in its 1998 re-
assessment of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain's oil potential. Rather, 
the current discussion, in my view, is prompted by the rhetoric and 
opportunistic efforts of those interests that have long advocated 
drilling in the Arctic Refuge, to exploit public concern about the 
current high prices of domestic heating oil, aviation gas and motor 
fuels.
  First, I want to address the issue, at the forefront of many of my 
colleagues' minds, of whether drilling in the Arctic Refuge constitutes 
a meaningful or appropriate response to the fact that the U.S. oil 
production is declining and exports are increasing. To answer that 
question, I want to review some import, export and consumption data 
compiled by two federal agencies, the Energy Information Agency and the 
Maritime Administration.

  I'm sure it will not surprise my colleagues that the last two decades 
have been marked by a steady decline in total domestic crude oil 
production, which includes crude oil plus natural gas liquids. 
Moreover, after a decline in petroleum consumption during the 1980s, 
oil use is again on the rise. In addition during the 1989-99 period, 
North Slope production declined from 1.885 million barrels per day to 
approximately 1.06 million barrels per day; the North Slope thus 
accounted for three quarters of the total domestic production decline 
which was a 1.105 million barrels per day decline in production during 
this period.
  At the same time that imports are increasing, U.S. export of oil 
products and crude oil totals nearly 1.0 million barrels per day. Of 
that total, most, approximately seven barrels out of eight, is refined 
product. As far as crude exports are concerned, Maritime Agency data 
indicate that export of Alaska North Slope crude in 1999 averaged about 
approximately 7.1 percent of total Alaska North Slope production.
  These data point to the complicated, transnational nature of the 
world petroleum market, a market in which the U.S. continues to export 
nearly a million barrels of petroleum products per day, nearly 5 
percent of total consumption. In light of the fact that we exist in a 
global economy, the United States is not likely to be able to produce 
its way out of the current petroleum shortages. When one looks at the 
fact that the Middle East possesses the preponderance of world oil 
reserves, it becomes clear that concerns about increasing use of 
imported oil might be better addressed by decreasing consumption 
through conservation and the switch to alternative energy sources.
  In addition, we have heard, over the course of several debates here 
on the floor, that the Arctic Refuge has the ``potential'' of yielding 
16 billion barrels of oil. I also wanted to address the issue of the 
likelihood that 16 billion barrels of oil will be discovered beneath 
the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge. First of all, that figure 
represents the outside limit of probabilities for an assessment area 
that includes the area of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain currently 
barred from drilling, plus adjacent areas where exploration has taken 
place. When one just examines the area within the Arctic Refuge that is 
under consideration, the correct low-probability estimate of oil is 
11.8 billion barrels of undiscovered oil , 25 percent less than the 16 
billion barrel figure we have heard to date. A field capable of that 
production has been discovered only once on this continent, at Prudhoe 
Bay. Moreover, despite recent advances in exploration technology, the 
U.S. Geological Survey has abandoned the notion of finding a super-
giant field and looks instead to the possibility of discovering several 
much smaller fields beneath the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge. 
Rather, the USGS assigns a probability of 5 percent or one chance in 
twenty, to the possibility that a field of that magnitude will be 
discovered. The mean estimate for technically recoverable oil is 
considerably lower and the figure for oil that is economically 
recoverable is lower still. In fact, the USGS concluded that it would 
expect to find four fields scattered across the refuge capable of 
producing, altogether, approximately 3.2 billion barrels of oil, one 
fifth the amount of oil that we have heard might be available.
  However, even if one accepts a higher number for the coastal plain's 
petroleum potential, members of this body need seriously to consider 
whether there is any connection between oil that might be found in the 
Arctic Refuge and the current high prices of petroleum products. I 
feel, simply, that the Arctic Refuge is not a solution to the current 
situation.
  For starters, it might take a decade to bring to market any oil that 
might be discovered in the Arctic Refuge. Exploration, discovery and 
assessment, field design and installation and pipeline design and 
construction are all time-consuming endeavors. The people of Wisconsin 
want lower gas prices now, not ten years from now.
  Moreover, the price of oil is determined by global supply and demand 
factors, not by the presence or absence of an individual oil field. 
Consider the

[[Page S1704]]

case of Prudhoe Bay. In 1976, the year before the nation's largest oil 
field, the largest ever discovered in North America entered production, 
a barrel of West Texas intermediate crude oil sold for $12.65 and 
standard gasoline averaged $0.59 per gallon. Two years later, with 
Prudhoe Bay adding more than a million barrels per day to domestic 
supply in 1978, West Texas crude had increased by more than 15 percent, 
to $14.85 per barrel, and gasoline averaged nearly $0.63 per gallon. 
During the next two years, as Prudhoe production increased, oil prices 
skyrocketed to $37.37 per barrel, while gasoline nearly doubled, to 
$1.19 per gallon. In 1985, with Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk both operating 
at full throttle, a barrel of West Texas crude sold for more than 
$28.00 per barrel and gasoline averaged $1.12 per gallon.
  So Mr. President, if drilling may impair our ability to make a 
decision about the wilderness-qualities of the Refuge in the future, if 
the Refuge does not contain as much oil as we thought, and if opening 
the coastal plain to drilling may do little to impact our current 
domestic prices, why are we considering doing so? The facts don't point 
toward drilling in the Refuge: the Refuge may not contain as much oil 
as we think, and opening the coastal plain to drilling may have only a 
minor impact on our current domestic prices.
  Finally, I have concerns about the arguments that I have heard in 
recent days that oil drilling and environmental protection are 
compatible. Only days ago I was traveling through the Niger Delta 
region of Nigeria by boat, where I observed firsthand the environmental 
devastation caused by the oil industry. The terrible stillness of an 
environment that should be teeming with life made a very powerful 
impression on me. These are the same multinational companies that have 
access to the same kinds of technologies, and though they are operating 
in a vastly different regulatory regime, I was profoundly struck by the 
environmental legacy of oil development in another ecologically rich 
coastal area.
  For these reasons, I support my colleague from Connecticut. I 
appreciate the fundamental concern that we need to develop a new energy 
strategy for this country. However, I disagree strongly when drilling 
would occur in this particular location which I feel is deserving of 
wilderness designation.
                                 ______