[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 165 (Monday, December 3, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12283-S12284]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   EXPLORATION FOR OIL AND GAS IN THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong 
opposition to exploration and drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic 
National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, region of Alaska. On two occasions, 
I have visited this remote and rugged wilderness region. In the summer 
of 1996, my then-16-year-old son Eric and I joined my good friend, Will 
Steger, an internationally renowned Arctic explorer, and two other men, 
on a two-week expedition in the Brooks Mountain Range of ANWR.
  On the evening of June 30, we pitched our tents on the icy tongue of 
an enormous glacier. The next morning, we awoke to find ourselves in a 
snowstorm. We trekked through fresh snow above our knees through near-
white out conditions to the top of the Continental Divide. Then we slid 
down the other side, frequently using our backpacks as toboggans and 
our boot heels as runners. It was an adventure I will always remember.
  The northern slope of this mountain range initially resembled a lunar 
landscape. Giant boulders and other, smaller rocks covered the surface, 
which was otherwise devoid of plants and wildlife. As we continued, 
however, we reached the beginning of the grassy plains, which are the 
homes of millions of wildlife.
  What impressed me most is how vast and untouched the ANWR region is. 
From the time we were dropped off by one bush pilot until the time we 
were picked up 2 weeks later by another, we encountered only one other 
group of human beings. For the rest of our time, our companions were 
one bear, a few caribou, who had not moved on to the coastal plains, 
and several quadrillion mosquitoes. This region is totally untouched by 
human beings and by their industrial and technological intrusions. It 
is there for anyone and everyone who wish to encounter it on its terms, 
rather than on their own.
  My second visit to the ANWR region occurred last March, at the 
invitation of my distinguished colleague, Senator Frank Murkowski of 
Alaska, who was then the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee. Senator Jeff Bingaman, then the ranking member and now the 
chairman of the same committee, and I joined Senator Murkowski, along 
with Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton; Ms. Mary Matalin, special 
assistant to the Vice President; and several committee staff.
  We flew first to Anchorage, where we were greeted by Alaska's 
Governor, Tony Knowles, a college classmate of mine, and other Alaskan 
government and business leaders who outlined to us the enormous 
economic importance of oil production to Alaska. We then flew to 
Valdez, the southern end of the trans-Alaskan oil pipeline, where I 
gazed in awe at magnificent snow-covered mountains, which arose from 
sea level to encircle us, and viewed enormous oil tankers being 
carefully escorted into and out of their ports.
  From there, we flew up to the Prudhoe Bay region on Alaska's northern 
coast, where about one and one-half million barrels of oil a day flow 
into the trans-Alaskan pipeline. After viewing some of the first 
drilling sites, we traveled to the nearby Alpine field, which is the 
newest and most technologically advanced of the Alaskan drilling 
operations. The Alpine field, which was only discovered in 1996, is 
located to the west of Prudhoe Bay, right on the coast of the Beaufort 
Sea. At 365 million barrels of recoverable reserves, it is one of the 
largest discoveries in the United States in recent years. We toured 
this very modern and technologically advanced facility, and I could not 
help but be impressed by the extensive efforts made to assure its 
safety of operation and its ecological compatibility. It was obviously 
built to be much more compact than the earlier operations, so as to 
leave a smaller ``footprint'' on the terrain. In fact, one of the 
Alaskan government officials, knowing that I come from Minnesota, had 
thoughtfully taken the time to investigate and discovered that the size 
of the Alpine complex was almost exactly the same as our famous 
shopping mall, the Mall of America. Alpine encompassed 97 acres, 1 acre 
smaller than Minnesota's mega-mall.
  Our trip concluded with our final night in Barrow, AK, which is the 
northernmost town in our United States of America. We awoke Sunday 
morning, April 1, to an outdoor temperature of -35 degrees, which 
dropped to a -65 degrees, with the wind chill. I felt like an April 
Fool, as I walked the outdoor airport tarmac to our plane for our 
return flight.
  This trip gave me an invaluable opportunity to see firsthand the 
region about which there has been so much debate in this Senate in 
recent months. I thank Senator Murkowski for inviting me, while knowing 
that I was an announced opponent of oil exploration and drilling in 
ANWR. Yet he and our other Alaskan hosts were most respectful, as well 
as most persuasive, as they presented their case.
  The debate over whether to open ANWR to oil and gas exploration and 
drilling pits two enormously important national interests against each 
other. One is our need to find and develop domestic energy resources. 
Much more is unknown than is known about the full extent of ANWR's oil 
reserves. The U.S. Geological Survey has produced a range of estimates 
of the amount of oil which is technically recoverable. Their mean 
estimate is 7.7 billion barrels.
  As we were informed on our trip last March, the oil industry's 
proposal to drill for and extract these reserves involves the 
construction of up to 20 drilling complexes, each one approximately the 
size of Alpine, along the coastal plain of ANWR. Thus, the legislation 
which passed the House last summer permits 2,000 acres of ANWR's 
coastal plain to be open for oil drilling. However, as I understand the 
House version, these 2,000 acres are not limited to one area. Rather, 
the legislation permits what the oil industry described to us last 
March: a chain of up to 20 Alpine complexes connected by oil pipelines 
extending along the coastal plain for as far as discovered and 
recoverable oil reserves are found.
  In my visualization, this enormous and vast industrial project would 
resemble 20 Mall of America-sized structures being built at various 
junctures along the coastline of this wilderness area. That, remember, 
is the size of one of these drilling facilities.
  Now, for those who have not yet visited our Mall of America--and I 
certainly encourage you to do so--it is the largest shopping mall in 
North America and, perhaps, the world. Tourists fly into Minnesota from 
all over our country and from cities throughout the world to shop 
there. Each of its four quadrangular concourses extends for slightly 
more than a mile, and its four shopping levels rise to the height of a 
typical seven-to-eight-story building. Like Alpine, it is a relatively 
compact structure; however, it is by no means a small ``footprint'' on 
the landscape.
  So, I ask myself, how would the construction of up to 20 of these 
Mall of America-sized drilling complexes, each one encompassing almost 
100 acres, connected to one another by a large oil pipeline, which also 
must be built and maintained along this corridor--how would this affect 
a wildlife refuge, with its hundreds of thousands of migrating caribou, 
and all the other wildlife that has existed here in ecological balance 
for thousands of years without the intrusion and interference of all 
the rest of us?
  I must conclude that, however well-designed and constructed, however 
carefully and safely operated, and however environmentally well-
intended, this project could be, it will have an enormous and 
irrevocable impact upon the essential purpose for which ANWR was 
designated and for which it must be protected: as a National Wildlife 
Refuge. In fact, by its very definition, a national wildlife refuge 
area is antithetical to the 20 large and interconnected industrial 
complexes, which this oil drilling would entail. As such, a vote to 
permit oil drilling in ANWR is a vote for the destruction of ANWR.

  I returned from my trip last March wondering if there was any way to 
reconcile these two choices: To develop domestic oil reserves and to 
protect this valuable national preserve. Upon reviewing the maps 
provided on our trip, I was surprised to notice for the first time a 
large region located to the west of Prudhoe Bay and Alpine, called the 
National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. This area was scarcely mentioned 
during our visit to ANWR, and we visited none of it. Upon further 
research,

[[Page S12284]]

however, I discovered that this National Petroleum Reserve, 
encompassing 23 million acres, was established by Congress for oil and 
gas development. Why, I wondered, given all the controversy over oil 
drilling in ANWR, haven't the oil reserves in the National Petroleum 
Reserve been first explored and extracted? Wouldn't it be a far better 
energy policy to first extract the oil from a 23-million-acre area 
which has been established for that purpose?
  Furthermore, oil production from the National Petroleum Reserve could 
begin several years before anything from ANWR. Under President 
Clinton's direction, in 1997, the Bureau of Land Management within the 
Department of the Interior conducted a study of a 4.6-million-acre 
section in the northeast portion of the National Petroleum Reserve, 
which is the area immediately to the west of Alpine and Prudhoe Bay. 
The Bureau prepared an environmental impact statement leading up to 
lease sales in May 1999, which drew 174 bids from six different 
companies on 3.9 million acres. More than 130 bids were accepted, at a 
total revenue to the Government of $104.6 million. This spring, 
Phillips Alaska, Inc., and Anadarko Petroleum Corporation reported 
discoveries of oil or gas, and Phillips indicated that these 
discoveries might be commercial. By early October of this year, 
Anadarko was in the process of securing permits to drill two additional 
prospect sites. The Interior and Related Appropriations Act for fiscal 
year 2002 provides $2 million in funding for planning and preparation 
of another EIS, in anticipation of holding a lease sale in 2004 for 
tracts in the northwestern area of the National Petroleum Reserve.
  The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that the National Petroleum 
Reserve could hold technically recoverable resources of 820 million to 
5.4 billion barrels of oil. However, these are only rough estimates. 
While these estimates are not as large as the current estimates of 
ANWR's potential, they are the equivalent of between 2 and 12 of the 
Alpine field. Thus, the choice which some would force upon us, whether 
to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or to continue the act 
of exploration for and development of our Nation's oil reserve is a 
false one. We can do both. We can, and we should, continue the 
environmental assessments and appropriate leasing of those sections of 
the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve until those discovered 
and recoverable oil supplies have been mostly extracted. Then, and only 
then, would we possibly have either the need or the possible 
justification to turn our attention to possible sites in ANWR. However, 
it will take many years, probably a couple of decades, before we have 
completed the oil production out of the National Petroleum Reserve. 
Until then, we have no reason to permit oil drilling in ANWR.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

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