[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 127 (Wednesday, September 26, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9846-S9851]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            ENERGY SECURITY

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize a reality 
that our Nation is at war. I think we all agree that never before have 
we been so blatantly or cowardly attacked as a consequence of this new 
form of terrorism, commercial airplanes having been used as weapons of 
terrorism. As we propose to prosecute this war, we need to make certain 
our Nation, our people, and our economy are prepared and ready for the 
battles to come.
  I rise today to discuss one part of how America should work to ensure 
one portion, and that is our energy security. The reality is that 
America is dependent today on foreign sources for 57 percent of the oil 
we consume. Further, we are importing most of this oil from unstable 
foreign regimes. It is no secret to any Member of this body. I have 
stood on the floor many times to remind my colleagues that we are 
currently importing a million barrels a day from Iraq, while, at the 
same time, the inconsistency of the manner that we are enforcing a no-
fly zone; namely, an area blockade, putting the lives of America's men 
and women at risk in enforcing this no-fly zone. We are funding Saddam 
Hussein at the time when we consider him a great risk and potentially 
associated with alleged funding of terrorists.
  After the tragic and horrifying events of September 11, it is 
patently obvious that we must now prepare for war, and it is equally 
obvious that the tools of war are driven by one source of energy, and 
that is oil. The aircraft, the helicopter, the gunships, and the 
destroyers do not run on natural gas. They do not run on solar or hot 
air. In peacetime alone, our military uses more than 300,000 barrels of 
oil each day. I remind my colleagues that oil must be refined. I can 
only imagine how that number will rise in the coming weeks, the coming 
months. Hopefully not the coming years.
  It should also be obvious that the country cannot depend on unstable 
regimes such as Iraq to meet our energy needs without compromising our 
national security. I have the greatest respect for our friends 
throughout the world, especially those in this hemisphere, especially 
my friends in Canada. However, it only makes sense for America to take 
steps to put its own energy house in order. We need to conserve our 
energy, improve our energy efficiency, but we also need to produce

[[Page S9847]]

as much energy as we can domestically so we can lessen our dependence 
on foreign sources.
  I come today in response to comments by Canada's Environmental 
Minister, Mr. David Anderson. I will read from an article that appeared 
in Reuters news service yesterday. I ask unanimous consent it be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

           Canada Urges Against Hasty U.S. Move on Arctic Oil

                          (By David Ljunggren)

       Ottawa.--Canada urged the United States yesterday not to 
     take a ``hasty and ill-considered'' decision to start 
     drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge, something which 
     Ottawa implacably opposes.
       Canada has long objected to U.S. plans to drill in the 
     Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), saying it would ruin 
     the calving ground of the Porcupine caribou herd upon which 
     native Gwich'in Indians in both Alaska and Canada depend.
       But Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe is threatening to add 
     language this week to a multibillion-dollar defense-spending 
     bill to allow drilling in ANWR as a way to secure future U.S. 
     oil supplies.
       ``It's particularly important at times when you have a 
     crisis on your hands to make sure you don't make hasty and 
     ill-considered decisions,'' Canadian Environment Minister 
     David Anderson told Reuters.
       ``It's also very important at times like this, when energy 
     security is a major issue, that you consider all factors and 
     not go ahead without the normal analysis and the thought that 
     would go into such a decision,'' he said in an interview.
       Canada, which says both countries should provide permanent 
     protection for the wildlife populations that straddle the 
     border, has already slapped a development ban on areas 
     frequented by the Porcupine herd.
       ``We still believe (drilling) to be the wrong decision, we 
     do not believe the American security situation in any way 
     justifies a change in that position,'' said Anderson.
       Canadian Energy Minister Ralph Goodale last week said there 
     are plenty of other energy sources in North America that 
     could be developed before ANWR needed to be touched. These 
     included the vast tar sands of Alberta, which are believed to 
     be richer that the entire reserves of Saudi Arabia.
       Supporters of opening the refuge say U.S. oil supplies from 
     the Middle East are at risk and the Alaska wilderness 
     reserves are needed to make up any possible shortfall.
       ``That is in our view a highly questionable approach. This 
     should be based on long-term strategic considerations--none 
     of this oil, if it were drilled, is going to come on flow for 
     a number of years,'' Anderson told Reuters.
       He said there was no evidence of a shortfall in supplies 
     from the Middle East and pointed to an almost 15 percent fall 
     in the price of crude oil yesterday as supply fears eased.
       Anderson was speaking from the western city of Winnipeg, 
     Manitoba, after briefing provincial ministers on the 
     international efforts to combat global warming.
       Delegates from around 180 countries failed in July to agree 
     to changes to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions of 
     the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. They are due 
     to try again next month in Marrakesh, Morocco, and Anderson 
     said he expected that meeting to go ahead.
       ``Our hope is that the civilized world will be able to deal 
     with the issue of terrorism and still maintain its values in 
     a number of areas,'' he said.
       ``We have a large number of global issues, including global 
     warming, which cannot simply be ignored. . . . We have long-
     term interests as nations and they continue even though we 
     clearly have a major short-to-medium-term problem--I'm 
     talking years now--on terrorism.''

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Canada's Environmental Minister, Mr. Anderson, this 
week urged America not to make hasty and ill-considered decisions to 
allow oil exploration in a tiny part of the Arctic coastal plain in 
Alaska just because of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the 
Pentagon, which claimed more than 6,000 American lives.
  First, I am a friend of Canada. We are neighbors. We are separated 
from the contiguous States by Canada. I serve on the U.S.-Canada 
Interparliamentary Conference. I have been chairman of that committee, 
and I have there a number of friends and associates. I have the highest 
regard for our relationship with Canada, which is a very unique 
relationship, very friendly, and one based on healthy competition. For 
Mr. Anderson to make such a statement, given Canada's current energy 
policy, is truly the height of hypocrisy.
  Let me address this in a series of charts. First, Canada has worked 
to tap energy from its own Northwest Territories, which, frankly, they 
have every right to do, and I support. But a good portion of that 
activity is going on within the migratory range of the Porcupine 
caribou.
  Let me show the division of Alaska and Canada. This map shows the 
Canadian activity on the Canadian side of the Northwest Territories and 
recognition of significant offshore activities, as well as onshore 
activities. This is the general manner in which the Porcupine caribou 
go across the border. Dempster Highway goes through this area. I show 
this because it gives folks a bit of geography for the area and a 
description of what we are talking about.
  This is proposed ANWR, and the 1002 area, and the effort to address 
the authorization by Congress to open 1.5 million acres for 
exploration. The Canadian activity is in a much broader area. It is, of 
course, appropriate that Canada makes its own decisions. They certainly 
have every right to do it. I point out a good portion of the activity 
is going on within the migratory range of the Porcupine caribou herd 
and is something our Canadian friends do not want to acknowledge. This 
is the same herd that occasionally in the last 2 years was on the 
Alaskan side. Canada claims it wants to protect them, and so do we. But 
they suggest it be done by preventing oil development in the 1002 
region.

  Here are the facts associated with the Canadian activity. Canada 
first drilled 86 wells, exploration wells, in an area finding nothing. 
This was in the Norman Wells area and they chose to make a park out of 
it. I admire and appreciate that. It is a small area and if they made a 
park out of it after they pretty well exhausted the prospects of 
finding oil and gas, and I am perfectly willing to make a park out of 
ANWR after we make a significant determination that there was oil and 
gas to address the security needs of this country, if that was the will 
of Congress.
  In any event, in the 1970s and 1980s there were 89 wells drilled in 
this area, including 2 in the exact area that the Nation made into what 
we call the Ivvavik National Park. That was only after they were dry 
holes.
  Canada built--and I want to show this on another map--the Dempster 
Highway. This is not a very vivid map. Here again is Alaska, here is 
Canada, and here is the Dempster Highway, which runs right through the 
migratory route of the Porcupine caribou. So you see this highway goes 
right through the range. They did this to facilitate oil-drilling 
equipment moving into the region and to provide access, which is 
certainly reasonable.
  In the past 3 years, Canada has moved to markedly expand its own oil 
and gas development in the migratory route of the caribou. As a matter 
of fact, in 1999 and 2000, Canada, according to a series of articles in 
the Vancouver Sun newspaper, offered six onshore lease areas for oil 
and gas exploration in the area. I ask unanimous consent the articles 
from the Vancouver Sun be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Vancouver Sun, June 11, 2001]

                   Drilling for Oil on Gwich'in Land

                           (By Stephen Hume)

       Tsiigehtchic, N.W.T.--Grace Blake pauses in mid-sentence 
     and looks out the window of the Gwich'in Cultural and Social 
     Institute where she's the acting executive director.
       Her gaze swings past the white spire of the Roman Catholic 
     Church, past the cemetery's white crosses buried in white 
     snowdrifts and slips over the frozen white confluence of the 
     Mackenzie and Arctic Red Rivers reaching for something beyond 
     what is visible to me.
       Despite a bleached, blinding intensity to the exterior 
     landscape that seeps into the emotional landscape the two of 
     us occupy, the moment seems as still as frosted glass, 
     brittle--and it prompts a sudden memory from 30 years before.
       ``Look for what's whiter than white,'' the old Gwich'in 
     hunter told me then, teaching me not far from here how to 
     pick-off winter plumaged ptarmigan with the lovely little 
     Browning .22 that I still have packed away in its case 
     somewhere.
       ``Find a patch of snow that's whiter than the snow--then 
     look for the black dot. That's the eye looking at you. Shoot 
     there, won't spoil the meat.''
       Tsiigehtchic has always been a point of convergence for the 
     old values, a place where people can still feel profound 
     spiritual connections to the land and anguish at the 
     dislocations of modernity, a place where to be a hunter is 
     not considered backward, but someone to be respected.
       The reverence shows in the photographs of elders adorning 
     the walls where Grace supervises the recording of stories and 
     legends and research into the cultural heritage of people 
     whose ancestors might have been among the first peoples to 
     arrive in North America--

[[Page S9848]]

     maybe 12,000 years ago, maybe 30,000. The archaeology of the 
     Old Crow flats isn't as precise as historians might like, but 
     it was a long, long time before this, anyway.
       The first time I was here, I visited sights where the 
     ancient habitation patterns were being uncovered by scholars 
     from the south even as a new way of life swept over the 
     Mackenzie delta. I've come back here to renew my acquaintance 
     with the place on the eve of another petroleum boom, although 
     this time the development may be transformed by the new North 
     as much as it transforms life for the people who live here.
       More than a quarter of a century ago, when Grace was a 
     beautiful young woman with her eight children still in her 
     future, Tsiigehtchic represented an oasis of intelligent calm 
     in the petroleum boom that swept over the vast delta of the 
     Mackenzie River.
       Back then the bush rang with the explosions of crews 
     shooting seismic surveys. Drill rigs punched more than 250 
     wells through the permafrost and charted the outline of a 
     Canadian elephant, the nation's second largest reservoir of 
     conventional oil and natural gas--perhaps 1.5 billion barrels 
     of crude and another 10 trillion cubic feet of gas.
       Bush planes and corporate Learjets came and went in such 
     numbers that the airport at Inuvik, a town freshly cut from 
     the raw, red banks of the Mackenzie, recorded aircraft 
     movements on a scale with Chicago and Dallas. The town of Old 
     Crow, just across the border in the northern Yukon, 
     population 300, inherited an air strip capable of handling 
     big multi-engine jets.
       Up the winter ice highway at Tuktoyaktuk, where the 
     inhabitants still carry the names of American whalers and 
     Scottish traders who arrived under sail, the town was a 
     frenzy of marine activity. There were drilling ships, 
     resupply barges and new islands were even being built out in 
     the shallows of the Beaufort Sea so that rigs could drill 
     without fear of ice floes.
       Through the airport lounges came a steady stream of oil 
     workers: geologists still sunburnt from work in the African 
     deserts; helicopter pilots from Vietnam wearing long-billed 
     hats and mirrored sunglasses; toolpushes fresh from 
     Indonesia; consultants with clipboards, bureaucrats with 
     briefcases and seismic crews toting sleeping bags rated for 
     60 below zero.
       The old hunter, now long dead, had laughed at the spectacle 
     as he restrung a pair of long, wide-bodied snowshoes for his 
     nephew: ``My great-great-granddad met Alexander Mackenzie. He 
     went. These roughnecks, they'll go. You'll go. But us, we're 
     not gonna go. We'll be here as long as this river.''
       And he was right. As abruptly as the oil boomers had come, 
     they left. I left. Businesses withered. Towns that had seemed 
     frantic fell into a Rip Van Winkle-like lassitude and the 
     vastness of the Arctic closed over another example of human 
     vanity.
       Now, with an energy-hungry America once again eyeing the 
     North as a potential source for its long-term needs, the 
     delta quivers with an eerie sense of anticipation as 
     somewhere over the horizon the second coming of the oil rush 
     and planning for the pipelines required to carry the rich 
     resources south gather momentum.
       Inuvik Mayor Peter Clerkson says he expects the number of 
     active rigs in the Mackenzie delta will quadruple next year 
     and double again in 2003.
       ``This won't slow down for the next three to four years,'' 
     he says. ``If the pipeline decision goes ahead it will 
     project out a long way. That pipeline is very important for 
     long-term sustained growth. We've had booms before. We need 
     long-term growth.''
       He's optimistic because of aboriginal involvement, not in 
     spite of it.
       Perhaps there's a signal here for British Columbia, where 
     land claims settlements are stalled, uncertainty stunts 
     investment potential and Premier Gordon Campbell is 
     contemplating what promises to be a divisive referendum on 
     the issue, however bland the final question.
       Yet in the Northwest Territories, generous land settlements 
     have had an enormously positive impact on natives and 
     nonnatives alike, the mayor says.
       ``You've got land settlements, the aboriginal groups are in 
     charge and the Inuvialuit have basically gone out and joint-
     ventured with everyone. It's a much different game. It really 
     changes things. It's not only because they are aboriginal, 
     it's because they are local. This is their home. The money 
     stays in this economy.''
       Over at the Gwich'in Tribal Council, newly-returned 
     executive assistant Lawrence Norbert, born 42 years ago in 
     Tsiigehtchic, says he's been ``grinning from ear-to-ear since 
     I got back.''
       ``It's much different doing business with governments and 
     corporations now,'' he says. ``It's like there's a new 
     sheriff in town and they realize that the old way of doing 
     business is over for good. That's the up-side. We all know 
     where we stand now.''
       As he and other aboriginals wait, the new drill rigs are 
     ready to rumble north. These units are equipped with special 
     design features that enable crews to work in the harsh winter 
     environment--captured engine heat is recirculated to keep 
     roughnecks' feet warm in temperatures cold enough to freeze 
     exposed flesh in minutes, for example.
       The rigs can require 80 or more trucks to move their 
     components and cost up to $50 million each to construct. That 
     was the price tag on each of three just built in Edmonton by 
     Akita Drilling Ltd. and bound north for next winter's 
     exploration season.
       As with northern Alberta and northeastern B.C., the 
     financial stakes are mind-boggling.
       N.W.T. Finance Minister Joe Handley says it's estimated 
     that if all reserves in the Arctic are fully developed, they 
     will be worth $400 billion with royalties of $76 billion 
     flowing to Canada, another $11 billion to the N.W.T. and 
     billions more to the First Nations on whose treaty lands the 
     development will occur.
       Even more than in northern Alberta, the term 
     ``Kuwaitification'' sidles into conversations about the 
     future implications. The entire population of N.W.T. would 
     leave empty seats around the end zones if it were to meet in 
     B.C. Place. And although the North's aboriginal population of 
     21,000 forms the majority, in total it's smaller than 
     Langley's.
       The corollary is that when the new oil rush reaches its 
     zenith, the entire weight of it is likely to descend upon the 
     inhabitants of Tsiigehtchic. The village has the misfortune 
     to sit in an oil patch so rich that crude seeps out of the 
     river banks to stain the river. And the first rig into the 
     delta in a decade has already been drilling a few kilometres 
     away.
       So this remote village of just over 170, as far north from 
     Vancouver as Mexico is south--this is where I decide to begin 
     the Arctic leg of my energy odyssey, talking about the 
     looming future with Grace, who is old enough to remember the 
     last big boom and wise enough, after an 11-year term as 
     chief, to worry about the next one.
       I find her on a Saturday morning at the back door to her 
     log cabin, the ground freshly splattered with the bright 
     crimson but already-frozen blood of a caribou from the 
     immense Porcupine Herd that migrates between here and its 
     calving grounds in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge where U.S. 
     President George W. Bush wants to begin exploring for oil.
       She'll talk, she agrees, but she won't invite me in. It's 
     an act of hospitality.
       ``I was skinning this animal last night,'' she says. 
     ``Goodness, I've got hair all over everything in there.'' And 
     she leads the unexpected visitor down to the institute 
     offices, instead, to talk about how things have changed--and 
     not changed--with respect to petroleum development.
       Almost 30 years ago, northern aboriginal communities 
     presented an opposition to the building of pipelines to carry 
     northern oil and gas down the Mackenzie Valley that was so 
     eloquent and united in purpose that a commission on the 
     matter headed by Tom Berger called for a 10-year moratorium 
     on development.
       With no way of transporting the resource to markets in the 
     south, further exploration guttered out just about when world 
     markets entered a period of oil glut. Prices fell. The boom 
     ended.
       Today, northern aboriginal leaders, including the Gwich'in, 
     are receptive rather than hostile, Grace says.
       ``People are pretty open to development now, but they want 
     control. They don't want anybody to disturb certain selected 
     lands that they consider a priority. They want control, 
     that's their only stipulation and this time around, people 
     need to listen to us in the communities.''
       Last time, she says, what happened in other northern 
     communities provided a textbook example for what to avoid 
     this time--but she wonders if anybody really took note.
       ``Do they even know? Do they care about the potential loss 
     of a way of life for our people? Why haven't we studied the 
     social impacts on Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and Aklavik so we can 
     learn what to avoid? How do we protect our way of life? We 
     don't want to lose our way--that's all we are saying. We are 
     the last people living on the Porcupine caribou herd. We 
     don't want to lose that.
       ``The Berger Report lays out everything the people want, so 
     we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Do it right, that's what 
     people are saying. Do it, but just do it right--meaning we 
     are the inhabitants of this country and we deserve to be 
     respected. And not just our leaders, the common folk.''
       That's a view I'll hear corroborated by Fred Carmichael, 
     chair of the Gwich'in Tribal Council in Inuvik, who says the 
     sea-change in attitudes has a simple basis: the affirmation 
     of aboriginal title through land claims and the opportunity 
     to take equity positions in any development.
       In fact, northern aboriginal leaders have hammered out a 
     tentative deal with energy companies to acquire as much as 
     one-third ownership of a proposed $3-billion pipeline down 
     the Mackenzie Valley to hook up with North America's supply 
     grid in Alberta.
       ``The difference is that back then, we weren't the 
     landlords. Now we are the landlords and that's a big 
     difference. At the time of the Berger hearings, we wanted a 
     10-year moratorium while we got ready. We just weren't ready 
     then. Well, we got our 10 years and now we are ready.''
       One of those who's preparing to reap the bonanza is Paul 
     Voudrach, a renewable resource officer at Tuktoyaktuk.
       He and his wife Norma are in the process of buying out the 
     nonnative owners of the Tuk Inn, a 16-room hotel and coffee 
     shop, so that he can qualify for the preferential bookings 
     that will come the way of a registered Inuvialuit under 
     agreements hammered out during land claims.
       Paul endured the last boom.
       ``What came with it was a lot of social problems,'' he 
     says. ``We had a huge amount of money coming in and people 
     who didn't know how to handle it. But our leaders are 
     knowledgeable about these things now. They

[[Page S9849]]

     felt the impact last time. This time I think it will be 
     something that will benefit the community.''
       Yet there's something grim about the atmosphere. Norma's 
     face is tight and nine-year-old Trish is inside despite the 
     fact that the town's annual jamboree is on.
       Paul's son, John, he tells me, was killed the week before 
     on the ice highway from Invuik. The 25-year-old was helping 
     his boss at a local transport company bring a new pickup 
     truck back from Edmonston when it collided with one of their 
     own loaded gravel trucks hauling to one of the oil camps.
       ``We were just sitting here waiting for him to come home. 
     We heard that he was stranded at Eagle Plains (on the 
     Dempster Highway) waiting for the road to open after a storm. 
     then we heard he had been in an accident and had been 
     killed.''
       It's a reminder for everyone in the community, he says, 
     that the kind of boom that's coming will be tempered with 
     things that nobody expects, good and bad, half a dozen of one 
     to six of the other when it comes to benefits and problems.
       ``What just happened to us, it opens your eyes. You think 
     there's going to be a tomorrow but there isn't. One minute 
     you are here, the next you are not. All your plans don't mean 
     anything. At least people here are a bit more aware now that 
     when the oil company comes with a job, that job can disappear 
     pretty fast.''
       Maria Canton, filling-in as editor at The Drum newspaper in 
     Inuvik while she waits to take up a new post at the Calgary 
     Herald, is equally cautious.
       ``The streets are lined with shiny new pickup trucks that 
     belong to workers from the south,'' she says. ``There are 
     crews driving up and down the street all day long, all night 
     long. The bars fill up.
       ``I guess you'd have to say that when they are here it's 
     good for the economy. They have lots of money and they don't 
     mind spending it. You have to remember that to them this is 
     just a camp. They don't think of it as home. They don't seem 
     to grasp that people actually live here all the time and have 
     no plans to leave. But when the job is done, they're gone and 
     Inuvik is left to clean up everything that comes after.''
       One who's determined that this time things will be 
     different is Nellie Cournoyea, the tough, former leader of 
     the N.W.T. government who now directs the Inuvialuit Regional 
     Development Corporation, the powerful business entity born of 
     the treaty agreement with Canada.
       Outside her office, a poster confronts every visitor: 
     ``Piiguqhaililugit uqauhiqput. Uqaqta Inuvialuktun uvlutaq.--
     Do not forget our language. Let's talk Inuvialuktun every 
     day.''
       ``I always look at the up-side,'' Nellie says of the coming 
     boom. ``A lot of people talk about social problems--we 
     already have social problems. We just have to learn to deal 
     with social problems as they arise. Jobs and income are a 
     wonderful antidote to problems with self-esteem.
       ``We have a lot of working age people and they have to go 
     to work. The socialist system (of welfare) is not a good 
     system to follow. We've always been supportive of 
     development--but we've always wanted to be meaningful 
     participants.'' It's when I ask Grace about this coming 
     transition from traditional hunting and fishing to a wage 
     economy, the sacrifice of a life governed by the rhythms of 
     the seasons for one governed by a clock, that her gaze 
     wanders off into the white landscape.
       And now the silence in the room is deepening like the snow 
     drifting up around the log cabins, snow that has already 
     filled the canoes, piled up on the tarps over stacked 
     firewood, smoothed all the indentations out of the landscape 
     like God's giant eraser applied to all sharp edges.
       I wonder to myself where her gaze has gone.
       Perhaps over the bluffs and up the river to Teetchikgoghan, 
     ``bunch of creeks piled up in one place,'' where she was born 
     in the bush almost half a century ago.
       Perhaps she is remembering those summers as a little girl 
     growing up in the care of her grandparents, Louis and 
     Caroline Cardinal, playing beside the river, a force of 
     nature that only someone born to it can fully understand, 
     the kind of presence that T.S. Eliot described as a 
     strong, brown god, coiled for release, never the same from 
     one moment to the next and yet containing everything 
     changeless and eternal.
       Grace told me earlier how she'd go back there in her 
     imagination to escape the pain and loneliness of residential 
     school, where ``every little thing that I knew about myself 
     was just torn right out of me and I used to pee my pants 
     right where I sat, I was so frightened.''
       So she'd go inside herself, back to that camp where she was 
     left to roam the shore and hillsides.
       ``My grandmother raised me as an Indian woman,'' she'd 
     said. ``The moment I went out into the world, as you call it, 
     I was supposed to erase all those experiences. It was like my 
     life wasn't my own.''
       So I ask about the changes that now seem inevitable, the 
     end of a hunting economy and its replacement with market 
     labour and she slips away from the conversation, disappearing 
     into some deep introspection.
       And begins to weep without sound, great, round, sudden 
     tears rolling down her face.
       ``Why I'm crying today is because my eldest son committed 
     suicide in January,'' she finally says.
       `` `Mum, I'm just tired,' he said. `I'm just tired of 
     everything. I'm tired of mad, sad faces. Nobody speaks 
     respectfully.' He just saw everything so clearly and it blew 
     his mind.
       ``He was the father of five little children and he didn't 
     have a steady income. His dad taught him how to trap and how 
     to hunt and how to fish. Then he listened when they talked 
     about jobs. He got his heavy equipment licence and left the 
     bush. But they only wanted him when they needed him, not when 
     he needed work. He couldn't go back to the bush and he 
     couldn't support his family,'' she says. ``We don't have a 
     big bank account like you--we have our own bank account. Our 
     bank account is the land, the animals, the fish in the 
     rivers. You can't just come and empty out our bank account 
     without asking us.''
       She gestures to the windown and the rig that everyone knows 
     is there but can't see. There are still beaver to trap, she 
     says, but there are no muskrats. It could be a natural cycle 
     but maybe it's a bigger thing, maybe it's because the lakes 
     are dying. The development boom is coming and there have been 
     no baseline studies of traditional environmental knowledge 
     done, she says. None. And that arrogance, that assumption 
     that the experts know best, shows the real relationship 
     between her world and the corporate world.
       ``We are the first and the last people of this frontier,'' 
     she says. ``People are supposed to be valued. Human beings 
     have the highest value. But we see that it's not like that. 
     This corporate guy told us they will encourage kids to stay 
     in school--if they don't go to school they won't hire them. 
     That is the most foolish thing I have heard. You don't 
     encourage people by telling them they aren't good enough. 
     Our culture is not like that. We don't push people out of 
     the way--we take them in, we make a place for everybody, 
     not just the best.''
       I thought then about the boom that's necessary to feed the 
     American superpower and her point about its structural 
     disregard for the genius of her culture, these amazing people 
     who learned to survive in the sparse boreal forest with not 
     much more than a string of animal sinew and their creative 
     imaginations.
       This time, will things really be different as the 
     politicians and executives promise?
       Or is there a deeper truth in the cry of grief from women 
     like Norma Voudrach and Grace Blake, already, in their own 
     ways, bearing the quickening burden of change?
       ``My son was the first suicide in this community. The first 
     ever. It's not the people, it's the system that makes us like 
     this,'' Grace says. ``When things start to move too fast and 
     people don't feel in control of their lives, that's when they 
     turn to drugs and alcohol. And suicide is the final act of 
     control, isn't it?
       ``We're being made to participate in our own destruction. 
     What happened to my son happens to everyone, can't you 
     understand that? When you are destroying us you are 
     destroying yourselves.''
       Outside, a glossy black raven flopped in the snow, pecking 
     at the caribou blood turned to ice on her doorstep and I 
     found that my questions for Grace about the coming oil boom 
     and what benefits it might bring to her community had all 
     dried up.
                                  ____


                [From the Vancouver Sun, June 11, 2001]

    Massive Herd Remains Soul of Native Band: Debate Rages Over the 
               Environmental Costs of Drilling in Refuge

                           (By Stephen Hume)

       Old Crow, Yukon.--The pilot, the reporter, even the two 
     biologists sent to do the aerial count 30 years ago, all fell 
     into that profound silence that accompanies the total failure 
     of words.
       What could be said? As far as the eye could see, the tundra 
     below rippled and undulated with more than 160,000 caribou. 
     The Porcupine herd on the move covered more than 60 square 
     kilometres, one of the natural wonders of the world.
       It may be decades since I watched that herd in awestruck 
     silence but today it is no less crucial to the survival of 
     Gwich'in tribal culture here in Old Crow, a remote village 
     770 kilometres north of Whitehorse and 112 kilometres north 
     of the Arctic Circle.
       The 300 people who live here, accessible only by air or by 
     canoe from Alaska when there's open water, represent one of 
     the last true hunting societies on Earth.
       People here depend upon the Porcupine herd for sustenance, 
     so not surprisingly, it's here, where the herd winters each 
     year in the trees that edge the Mackenzie River delta and the 
     northern Yukon, that an American debate over whether or not 
     there's to be drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic Wildlife 
     Refuge is watched with intense interest.
       There's been an effort to join forces with the Old Crow 
     Gwich'in to lobby the U.S. senators not to open the Arctic 
     Wildlife Refuge,'' says Grace Blake, former chief in 
     Tsiigehtchic, a village in the Northwest Territories that 
     also relies on the herd. ``It's not a big movement yet, just 
     pockets of people. We need to educate the Americans about how 
     important this is to us.''
       As one of the last near-pristine and contiguous wilderness 
     regions in the United States, the more than eight million 
     hectares of the AWR encompass the complete migratory routes 
     and summer calving grounds of the Porcupine herd.
       Each year the caribou, identifiable by the stark 
     silhouettes of the antlers on mature bulls, make one of the 
     most remarkable journeys on the planet. Sustained only by a

[[Page S9850]]

     winter diet of sparse lichens, they swim freezing rivers, 
     climb snowy mountain ranges and cross the blackfly- and 
     mosquito-infested tundra on the way to the coastal plain 
     where cold winds sweeping in from the Arctic Ocean's pack ice 
     keep the blood-sucking insects away from newborn calves. 
     Then, when they've fattened up on succulent new vegetation, 
     they retrace their route to the winter shelter of the boreal 
     forest before temperatures plunge below freezing and wind 
     chills render the open country uninhabitable to all but the 
     snowshoe hare, the muskox, the wolverine and the barrenground 
     wolf. Fifteen years ago, when then-U.S. president Ronald 
     Reagan expressed sympathy for an oil industry lobby that 
     sought access to the region which lies adjacent to the Yukon 
     border, the Gwich'in allied themselves with the powerful U.S. 
     environmental lobby to successfully block development.
       Now, with consumers complaining about gasoline prices and a 
     former Texas oilman in the White House in the form of George 
     W. Bush, the prodevelopment lobby which has been biding its 
     time in Alaska and the Lower 48 states has reemerged with a 
     vengeance.
       Taking point for the development lobby is Arctic Power, 
     ostensibly a grassroots citizens group which favors oil and 
     gas exploration in the protected area. It's an organization 
     which has hired professional lobbyists in Washington, D.C., 
     and was recently granted almost $2 million in funds by the 
     Alaska state legislature to do more of the same.
       Rallying on the other side are organizations like the 
     Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the 
     Audubon Society and nearly 500 leading U.S. and Canadian 
     scientists who have called on President Bush to stop trying 
     to change the law that prohibits oil extraction in the Arctic 
     National Wildlife Refuge.
       They include world-renowned naturalist George Schaller, 
     Edward O. Wilson, winner of the National Medal of Science and 
     two Pulitzer Prizes for books on biology, David Klein, a 
     noted Arctic scientist at the University of Alaska and 50 
     other Alaska scientists.
       One major difference in the political jockeying this time 
     around is that the dispute has become an exercise in 
     political cyberwar.
       Arctic Power has a sophisticated web site which purports to 
     explode the ``myths'' of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Their 
     opponents have launched their own information sites at which 
     they argue that the amount of oil available from drilling in 
     the refuge--which is the last five per cent of Alaska not 
     available to the resource industry--would meet less than two 
     per cent of U.S. annual needs even in its peak year of 
     production, which couldn't come before 2027.
       Citizens are invited to register their opposition with an 
     e-mail petition.
       Meanwhile, important as oil might be to the U.S. economy, 
     the fate of the Porcupine herd is just as important to the 
     social and economic fabric of the Gwich'in. And the First 
     Nation's fears for the fate of the herd are growing rapidly.
       Numbers of Porcupine caribou have now declined by 
     approximately 20 per cent--to the present total of 129,000 
     animals--even without the added stress of additional oil 
     exploration activity in the herd's calving grounds on the 
     North Slope of Alaska.
       And as an example of what development might mean in the 
     future, green opponents of drilling point to Prudhoe Bay, 
     less than 100 kilometres to the west. There, they argue, 
     2,500 square kilometres of fragile tundra has become a 
     sprawling industrial zone containing more than 2,400 
     kilometres of roads and pipelines, 1,400 producing wells and 
     three airports.
       ``The result is a landscape defaced by mountains of sewage 
     sludge, scrap metal, garbage and more than 60 contaminated 
     waste sites that contain--and often leak--acids, lead, 
     pesticides, solvents, diesel fuel, corrosives and other 
     toxics,'' says the NRDC.

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Again, Canada has every right to develop its energy. 
They are a formidable competitor to our own domestic production, and we 
enjoy access to that market and want to encourage it. But I resent the 
pot calling the kettle black, so to speak.
  There is another chart that generally shows the extent of the 
activity, again in a little more detail. Here is the Alaska side. This 
is the Canadian Northwest Territories. This is the identification of 
wells that have been drilled and off-shore activity. You can see, as it 
moves through this area, the Porcupine caribou move through this area 
and it has significant exposure. And the Dempster Highway runs from 
Norman Wells on up to Inuvik.
  The point I want to make is that as we look at the companies coming 
in, Anderson exploration and Petro-Canada, we can identify the 
companies that bought up the leases. Anderson alone has done nearly 600 
square miles of 3-D seismic testing over the past three winters. Petro-
Canada has already drilled exploratory wells outside of Inuvik, where 
Anderson now plans to drill in the Eagle Plain area. That is again 
shown on this chart, in this general area. It is a very significant 
area associated with the migratory path of the caribou.
  Are these exploration plans ``hasty and ill-conceived''? I question 
that because these are the words of Mr. Anderson, the Canadian 
Environmental Minister. I am sure the answer would be no; in his 
opinion they are not ill-conceived. That is their opinion and I do not 
challenge that. But neither is America's plan to allow careful and 
environmentally sensitive exploration in only 2000 acres, in the sense 
of any permanent footprint occurring in the Alaska Arctic Coastal 
Plain. That is less than .01 percent of Alaska's wildlife refuge, which 
is much broader than that, containing about 17 million acres.
  Mr. Anderson would say Canada's drilling is OK because it doesn't 
disturb the caribou calving, but he didn't and doesn't mention that 
Canada is drilling in the midst of the herd's mating area. He doesn't 
mention that Canada is drilling in the calving area for its own herds.
  He doesn't mention that Canada's action after building the Dempster 
Highway has probably done more to harm the health of the Porcupine herd 
than anything that America would ever consider.
  Consider for a moment, again, this chart and what this highway has 
done. It has provided access. There is nothing wrong with access. Here 
is the Eagle Plains. Here is the highway. This is the migration route.
  In the past decade, Canada reduced the previous 8-kilometer hunting 
area on both sides of the Dempster Highway, dropping it to a 2-
kilometer zone. Thus, Canadian hunters who want access have now access 
to shoot the Porcupine caribou after only a short stroll from the 
shoulder of the Dempster Highway. The herd has fallen from 180,000 
animals to its current 129,000. That drop certainly has not been caused 
by any American activity.
  The Canadian Environmental Minister, Mr. Anderson, in the past has 
complained opening Alaska's Coastal Plain would be unfair to the 
Gwich'in Indians of Canada and Alaska who oppose the development, but 
they certainly do not oppose it any longer in Canada. Canadian 
Gwitch'in members are clearly supporting oil and gas exploration, 
probably now because they will have a financial benefit, certainly the 
benefit of jobs and better housing, better social care, and better 
medicine following the completion of their land claim settlement.
  Let me share a quote:

       The difference is that back then--

  Meaning previous years before the land claims--

     we weren't landlords. Now we are the landlords and that is a 
     big difference. . . . Now we are ready for development.

  This was Fred Carmichael, the chairman of the Gwich'in Tribal Council 
in Canada. This article, again, came from the Vancouver Sun, the quote 
to which I am referring.
  Could Mr. Anderson's opposition to Alaska's environmentally sensitive 
oil development be caused by Canada's desire to have a ready market for 
its Mackenzie Delta oil finds in America? I hope so. We would welcome 
it.
  But according to Canadian press, Inuvik Mayor Peter Clerkson 
predicted oil drilling would quadruple in this area in the winter and 
double again next winter. Again, this level of activity certainly 
indicates that.
  The Northwest Territory Finance Minister has just been quoted as 
hoping oil finds will generate $400 billion for Canada, all money being 
transferred to Canada, mostly from the pockets of American consumers as 
we look to Canada for energy needs.
  Call it what you will, it is healthy competition. Mr. Anderson, the 
Environmental Minister, in his fears about American oil exploration, 
ignores that the legislation currently pending to open the Arctic 
Coastal Plain fully protects the environment and the Porcupine caribou, 
and to all wildlife on Alaska's Coastal Plain. The House passed 
language, as you know. The House did pass H.R. 4. That energy 
legislation authorizes the opening of ANWR. It limits development to a 
2,000-acre footprint out of the 19 million-acre refuge. That would 
leave nearly 100 square miles of habitat between each oil-drilling pad, 
more than enough for the caribou to pass through, given the new 
advances in directional drilling, 3-D seismic.
  So I think if we compare what Canada's footprint in the Canadian 
Arctic is, and our own, the technology would speak for itself. Further, 
we propose to

[[Page S9851]]

limit development so there will be no disturbance to calving during the 
June-July calving season. This is not about protecting the environment 
and the caribou that live in it. Mr. Anderson's objection must be about 
something else.
  Look at the objections that opponents voice to exploring in ANWR. One 
is that it is an insignificant amount of oil, not worth developing. If 
it isn't, we will make a park out of it. But that is nonsense. The USGS 
estimates Alaska's portion of the Coastal Plain--I would say the 
occupant of the chair has been up there--the estimate is it contains 
between 6 and 16 billion gallons of economically recoverable oil. If it 
is 10 billion barrels alone, the average, it is equivalent to 30 years 
of oil we would import from Saudi Arabia at the current rate, and 50 
years equal to what we import currently from Iraq.
  By the way, 16 billion barrels is 2.5 times the size of the published 
estimate of the new Canadian reserves in the Mackenzie Delta area, 
here. It is absurd to think that ANWR only represents a 6-month supply 
of oil as some opponents say. That would assume that ANWR is this 
country's only source of oil.

  Some say it will take too long to get ANWR oil flowing. But it 
certainly will take less time to produce than some of the potential 
deposits in Canada. And if we are truly at war against terrorism, we 
have the national will to develop Alaska oil quickly, while still 
protecting the environment.
  We built the Pentagon in 18 months, the Empire State Building in a 
year and built the 1,800-mile Alaska Highway in 9 months. Oil could be 
flowing out of ANWR quickly if we made a total commitment to make that 
happen. I believe we could do this in 12 months instead of the five 
years, some predict.
  There are many other misstatements about Alaska's potential for oil 
development. We will have time to discuss those in this body as we work 
on a national energy policy that makes sense for America. That debate 
must occur soon; we must give the President the tools he needs to 
ensure our energy security. I know members on both sides of the aisle 
are anxious to make this happen.
  But I wanted to come and respond to the comments made by Canada's 
environment minister, because they were horribly unbalanced in light of 
Canada's oil drilling program in the migratory route of the Porcupine 
caribou herd.
  I encourage an opportunity to debate Mr. Anderson, and I stand behind 
my assertion that, indeed, his comments don't reflect the reality nor 
the true picture of what is going on in Canada.
  Again, I have fondness for our Canadian friends and Canada itself. I 
am not saying they are harming the environment in the least. I am 
pointing out what they are doing. The Members of this body need to know 
that as well.
  I welcome additional oil production in North America, as long as it 
is done in an environmentally sound manner. Again, I remind all of us 
that we give very little thought to where our oil comes from as long as 
we get it. We should do it right in North America, Canada, and Alaska, 
as opposed to it coming from overseas, over which we have really no 
control.
  I find the objections to be unbalanced and grossly unfair since they 
totally ignore the environmental issues involved in oil development in 
the Arctic.
  I also find the Environment Minister's statement just days after the 
tragedy in New York and Washington not only untimely but unfortunate.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. I wish my colleagues a good 
day.

                          ____________________