[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 29 (Friday, March 11, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2507-S2510]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             OIL IN ALASKA

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I come to the floor this morning because 
of the misinformation being spread, particularly through the press, in 
the past weeks on what is called ANWR. It is the area in the 1\1/2\ 
million acres of our arctic coast that has been set aside since 1980 
for oil and gas development. I have been involved in this issue almost 
since the beginning of my career. I want to talk a little bit about the 
history of this area.
  In 1923, President Harding withdrew 23 million acres for the Naval 
Petroleum Reserve Number 4. That did not include the area of the arctic 
we are dealing with today, but it was the first indication to the 
Nation that there was tremendous oil and gas potential in the northern 
region of Alaska. We were a territory then, and this withdrawal came 
right after the teapot dome scandal. So even then there were 
indications of places in the United States where there were areas that 
could be explored or developed for oil.
  This withdrawal was important because the Navy used a great deal of 
oil. They used to take it right out of the ground in Alaska and pump it 
right into Navy vessels. They burned the real crude oil at that time. 
It was essential to develop and use the Alaska resources for national 
defense. The whole concept of Alaska has played a strategic role in 
national security throughout its history, particularly beginning in 
1923. Incidentally, that was the year of my birth. So I have been 
around during this whole period.
  In 1943, as World War II was going on, the Secretary of the Interior 
issued Public Land Order 82, which withdrew all of the public and non 
public lands in Northern Alaska--encompassing over 48 million acres. 
One of the reasons stated by the Secretary at that time was that 
tremendous amount of oil and gas that might be in northern Alaska were 
necessary for use in connection with the prosecution of the war.
  As a matter of fact, history shows that in about 1919, there was a 
group of people who went to the northern area of Alaska along the 
arctic coast and started staking mining claims, claiming the oil in 
those lands. That led

[[Page S2508]]

Congress, in 1920, to enact the Mineral Leasing Act. Particularly the 
Texans didn't want to see Alaskan oil developed through a patenting 
process where they didn't have to deal with the national concern.
  As a matter of fact, it was, I think, basically the southwestern oil 
bloc that led to the two orders I mentioned. They were afraid of the 
real development of northern Alaska. There were oil seeps all the way 
along the arctic coast. People knew there was oil. The question was, 
where were the areas which could be commercially developed?
  Public Land Order 82 was still in existence when I went to the 
Interior Department in the 1950s. I was Legislative Counsel and 
Assistant to then Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton. At the end of 
the Eisenhower administration, I was the Solicitor of the Interior 
Department.
  I worked with Secretary Seaton at the time he decided to revoke 
Public Land Order 82 because there were vast areas up there that we 
thought had oil and gas potential, and we wanted to get to them.
  Our Statehood Act, which came about in 1958, required approval of the 
President of the United States to have any development north of the 
line, what is called the pick line. The Porcupine and Yukon Rivers 
basically made that line. President Eisenhower, again, in the interest 
of national security, said nothing should take place, no action should 
take place up there of a national nature without consideration of 
national security. It took approval of the President to revoke that 
Public Land Order 82 and to start allowing the State of Alaska to 
select lands.
  After Secretary Seaton had issued the order to revoke Public Land 
Order 82, the State of Alaska did, in fact, select a portion of land 
between the Naval Petroleum Reserve and an area Secretary Seaton 
created in 1960 which was the Arctic National Wildlife Range.
  Again I want to say, the Range, which included the 1.5 million acres 
of Arctic coast we are debating today, was created to assure the 
Fairbanks Women's Garden Club that there would be protection of the 
flora and fauna of northeastern Alaska. At that time, what was not 
withdrawn--the 25 million acres on one side of the Naval Petroleum 
Reserve to the west and the Arctic wildlife range to the east--was a 
corridor that later became known as the Prudhoe Bay area.
  From that area, after discovery of oil in 1968, we have now produced 
over 16 billion barrels of oil, although at the time the estimate of 
those involved in making the survey was that up to 1 billion barrels of 
oil might be recoverable from this area.
  When Secretary Seaton revoked Public Land Order 82 in 1960, he also 
created the 8.9-million-acre Range. I helped draw up that order. That 
order specifically permitted oil and gas activities to take place under 
stipulations to protect the fish and wildlife.
  After the Eisenhower administration came to an end, President Kennedy 
was elected. On the first day of that new administration, I visited 
with Stewart Udall who was to be the new Secretary of Interior. I told 
him the background of what we had done. His brother was in the House of 
Representatives. He disagreed with me about what was to happen in that 
area.
  At the time in 1960 when we issued the order creating the Range, the 
Under Secretary of Interior, Elmer Bennett, who used to be a staff 
member of the Senate, assured Alaskans that ``this Department has every 
intention to foster legitimate oil and gas activity within this area, 
if any potential is discovered.''
  There is no question about it, the Eisenhower administration strictly 
approved the concept of setting aside an area to protect the fish and 
wildlife but also mandated in the order that oil and gas leasing would 
be protected.
  I was appalled this last week when some of the Eisenhower family came 
forward and sort of indicated that it was the intention of President 
Eisenhower that this area be a wilderness. Nothing is further from the 
truth. That is not the truth at all. We did not withdraw a wilderness; 
we withdrew a wildlife range.
  I believe there is no question about this: We are heading into an 
area about which people ought to know the history. Let me go further 
than that. As Assistant to the Secretary and then Solicitor, I studied 
the Alaska Native claims. I was from Alaska, and Secretary Seaton, on 
the floor of this Senate, as a Senator, made only one speech, and that 
was a speech to urge Congress to admit Alaska into the Union as a 
State. He was committed to Alaska statehood, and he asked me to come 
down and join him in the Department. I readily did that. Elmer Bennett, 
who was the Under Secretary, was a friend of mine. We started off to 
develop the concept of getting Alaska into the Union.
  Section 4 of the Statehood Act, which I also helped draft along with 
my predecessor Senator Bartlett, who was a delegate from Alaska to the 
House of Representatives, specifically required that Congress take 
action to settle the Alaska Native land claims.

  I say parenthetically, prior to that time, Alaska statehood was 
defeated because the Alaska Native people and their representatives 
opposed statehood because they had substantial claims against the 
United States and they were afraid of concepts of land grants to the 
new State that might harm them. We wrote in section 4 of the Statehood 
Act that Congress would take that act, and nothing in the Statehood Act 
would expand or diminish the claims of Alaska Natives against the 
Federal Government.
  During this time, my predecessors, Senators Gruening and Bartlett, 
introduced bills to try to settle these claims. They were not enacted 
because they were not acceptable to Alaska Natives. When I came to the 
Senate in 1968, I started participating in the activity and introduced 
the bill to settle Alaska Native land claims.
  I met with President Nixon later in 1970, along with representatives 
of the Alaska Natives, in order to urge the President to come forward 
and support an enormous land settlement. President Nixon, to his 
credit, did do that. He agreed with us. With me at the time was a 
person named Don Wright, who was a member of the State legislature when 
I was there, a distinguished leader of the Gwich'in community.
  We developed the concept of settling the land claims by the State and 
Federal Government participating together in a billion-dollar cash 
settlement and the Federal Government recognizing that entitled Alaska 
Natives to 44 million acres and that those lands would come ahead of 
the statehood selections under the Statehood Act.
  We proceeded with the land claim settlement, and by 1971 we had a 
bill which was a very good bill. It required the approval for the first 
time of Alaskans, who voted to accept that bill to become a State. We, 
in fact, developed a compact with the United States in our statehood 
process.
  At the time in 1958 when we required the settlement by Congress, we 
recognized there were valid claims of the Native people. My bill, along 
with my colleague, then-Senator Gravel, brought about the settlement of 
those claims.
  A byproduct of that was we created a series of regional corporations 
for the Alaska Native people. Those corporations and their village 
corporations also--the land was separated between the village 
corporations and the regional corporations. The net result of it was 
that the regional corporations were subject to one unique provision I 
authored, which was that any regional corporation that received income 
from resource development--it is called 7(I) in that 1971 act--was 
required to share those revenues with the other 11 regional 
corporations.
  This was very important because Don Wright, who had been with me at 
the time of the meetings with President Nixon and represented the 
Gwich'in people, decided they did not want to share. They withdrew from 
the settlement in terms of being an area subject to the concept of a 
regional corporation, and they took the title to their lands, subject 
only to the control and advice of the Secretary of Interior. But they 
did not participate in the settlement in any other way. They were 
allowed to take their lands, and they got some of the cash, but they 
did not come under 7(I).
  I mention that because often the representatives of the Gwich'in 
people visit this city. The Gwich'in people live on the South Slope of 
Alaska. It is the North Slope that has the oil. It is the North Slope 
that had Prudhoe Bay. It

[[Page S2509]]

is the North Slope that has the Arctic coast. But the Gwich'in people, 
particularly the Arctic village people, withdrew from the settlement 
for the reason they thought they had the oil. They immediately tried to 
lease their lands, and no one wanted them. They also had coal, and they 
thought they should have coal development. They urged for coal 
development. No one wanted to develop their coal. Where they are 
located, it is almost impossible to have a corridor to the south 
without going east and then south. It was just not economically 
feasible. It might be sometime in the future.

  But the Gwich'in people lost out by their decision to go it alone. 
They now come to the Congress and say do not allow the Arctic coast to 
be developed for oil--just a few of them, not all of them. They should 
not be listened to. The people who should be listened to are the people 
who live in the area. One of the reasons they oppose oil and gas 
development in the Arctic plain is that they say it might hurt the 
porcupine caribou herd that comes over their lands. Those herds go over 
to the traditional area. Only a portion are Canadian natives who 
migrated to Alaska. In Canada, that same caribou herd is subject to 
commercial hunting. It is being depleted because of the practices in 
Canada, not because of any problem in Alaska. As a matter of fact, 
there are years during which the caribou do not even go to the North 
Slope in Alaska because of the problems they face in Canada.
  When the Alaska oil pipeline was authorized by Congress in the 
seventies, we heard these same arguments: The development of the 
pipeline is going to destroy the caribou; it is going to destroy the 
environment. None of that has been true. The same people who made the 
arguments then are making them now. The same organizations that collect 
money from Americans throughout the country now--``send in your money 
and help save the Arctic''--tried that then. The 3,000 caribou in the 
area of the pipeline are now 32,000. They have not been harmed at all. 
Alaskans do not allow our wildlife to be harmed. We will protect the 
caribou when they do come to the Arctic coast.
  I wonder, Mr. President, if you know that there is no oil and gas 
drilling activity in the summertime. If there have been production 
facilities put in during the wintertime, you can produce oil in the 
summertime as long as you do not interfere with the wildlife. The oil 
industry wants to do it in the wintertime because the lands are frozen. 
They can take equipment across the lands easily. They can build ice 
roads. They can develop whatever they want and put them on pads, and 
when they leave, they remove the pads, and the roads thaw in the 
summertime.
  I challenge anyone to come up and find where the camps were to build 
the Alaska oil pipeline. When we hear these extreme environmentalists 
talk, one would think developing the oil and gas of the Arctic plain 
would harm it. That is not true at all. The new technology we are using 
in oil and gas in Alaska will take an area smaller than Dulles Airport 
to develop this 1.5 million acres. But that is another thing.
  We experienced an oil crisis in the 1970s precipitated by the Arab 
oil embargo. At that time, we were importing about a third of our oil, 
and the embargo devastated our economy. Today, we import 60 percent of 
our oil. Imagine the consequences of an embargo now.
  In the wake of this energy crisis, Congress debated the Trans-Alaska 
Pipeline Authorization Act. During this debate, there was an 
understanding on both sides of this aisle, no filibuster.
  The final pipeline was approved when the Vice President of the United 
States cast his vote to break the tie of 49 to 49, but there was no 
hint of filibuster from either side. There were people on both sides 
who disagreed with the pipeline, but they said it has to be an up-or-
down vote. This was important for our national security.
  It was a national security issue because our nation needed oil. And 
the debate we are currently having now is about oil from this area that 
is known as ANWR. It is not part of a refuge. It will not become a part 
of the refuge until the oil and gas development phase is completed. 
Sometime when we have exhausted the oil resources, it will become part 
of the refuge. But today it is managed with the intent that there will 
be oil and gas leasing there as soon as Congress approves the 
environmental impact statement that was passed. That was the compromise 
that came about in 1980. So I want to skip from 1971 to 1980 by saying 
that in the Alaska Native Land Claim Settlement Act, section 17(d)(2) 
required that there be a study of Alaska's lands in order that we might 
determine what lands should be withdrawn.
  That debate started in 1972 and did not end until 1980. It was a 
battle between the forces led in the House by Mo Udall and in this body 
by Senators Jackson and Tsongas. I and my colleague, Senator Gravel, 
tried our best to represent Alaska. We had a bill almost completed in 
1978. It had passed the House and the Senate and gone to conference.
  Both Senator Gravel and I had participated in that conference. Even 
though I was not a member of the committee at the time, they permitted 
me to be in that conference for a long period of time. After the bill 
had passed the House in the waning moments that ended the 1978 
Congress, Senator Gravel blocked that bill. So when we came back in 
1979, we had to go back and deal with it again.
  After Senator Gravel blocked the bill, President Carter withdrew 100 
million acres of Alaskan land under what is called the Antiquities Act. 
Congress had to pass a bill to lift that withdrawal made by President 
Carter in order that we might proceed with the development of Alaska 
and allow Alaskans to select statehood lands and the Alaskan Native 
people to get their land claims to those lands.
  We worked very hard and we finally got a bill that passed the Senate 
and passed the House, went to conference, and came back to the Senate. 
This is 1980. It passed the Senate as a conference report and went to 
the House. President Carter asked the House not to pass it before the 
election because he disagreed with section 1002 that created the 1.5 
million acres in which oil and gas development was permitted.
  After that election, which President Carter lost, President Carter 
then asked the House to pass the bill. That bill was signed by him 
after the election and before he left office. In that election, 
Republicans gained a majority of the Senate. My constituents asked me 
to do everything I could to block that bill. It had already passed the 
Senate. When the President signed it, it became law.
  The ink was not dry before President Carter tried to renege on the 
law that he had just signed. Even today a letter has come now to us 
from President Carter. It is a letter that I am appalled at, as a 
matter of fact. For a President to have signed a law and said he was 
part of the development of that law, but then urge us not to follow the 
law is amazing to me.
  There has been a similar letter come to me, and that I have shared 
with the Senate, and that happens to be the letter from former Senator 
Jim Buckley. In the 1970s, Jim Buckley, as he left the Senate, became 
one of the opponents of the development of this area. As a matter of 
fact, he had voted against it while in the Senate.
  Unsolicited, on January 24, former Senator Buckley, now Judge 
Buckley, sent me a letter. I ask unanimous consent that the letter be 
printed in the Record following my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. STEVENS. He pointed out:

       Twenty-six years ago, after leaving the Senate, I was a 
     lead signatory in full-page ads opposing oil exploration in 
     the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve that appeared in the New 
     York Times and the Washington Post. I opposed it because, 
     based on the information then available, I believed that it 
     would threaten the survival of the Porcupine caribou 
     populations in the areas of Prudhoe Bay and the Alaskan 
     pipeline have increased, which demonstrates that the 
     Porcupine herd would not be threatened, and new regulations 
     limiting activities to the winter months and mandating the 
     use of ice roads and directional drilling have vastly reduced 
     the impact of oil operations on the Arctic landscape.
       In light of the above, I have revised my views and now urge 
     approval of oil development in the 1002 Study Area for the 
     following reasons.

  He lists the three reasons, and he specifically says, as he closes:

       Having visited the Arctic on nine occasions over the last 
     13 years (including a recent

[[Page S2510]]

     camping trip on Alaska's North Slope) I don't think I can be 
     accused of being insensitive to the charms of the Arctic qua 
     Arctic. I just don't see the threat to values I cherish.

  It is signed ``Sincerely, Jim.''
  Now, that represents an informed point of view. I am now in a 
position where I think we must address what has been said in the 
newspapers and so many areas about the value of the oil in this area.
  The coastal plain of ANWR is not a wilderness area. There was a test 
well drilled in this area, the results of which remain secret under an 
agreement between the oil industry and the Federal Government. It was 
drilled near Kaktovik.
  When we hear people such as Senator Feingold say ANWR should not be 
in the budget resolution because the land does not have any value, he 
is wrong. The land does have value. As I said before, when we were 
trying to develop Prudhoe Bay, the estimate was made that there was a 
billion barrels of oil at the most in Prudhoe Bay.
  After producing 16 billion barrels, we know there is oil on the 
coastal plain of ANWR. There is no question that we have a duty, in the 
interest of national security, to drill in this area.
  The budget that is coming before us, and I will be speaking again 
next week on this, has a provision which deals with the estimate of the 
amount of money received by the Federal Government and the State in the 
first 5 years of the development of this area. I believe that is $5 
billion. Those revenues would be split between the State and the 
Federal Government. In the process of valuing what the oil might be 
worth, the value of $25 a barrel for oil has been used. I asked the 
CBO: Why do you not use the actual amount of oil today, which is over 
$50?
  They said that was the amount used when they first made the study, 
and they have not had any studies to justify raising that now. As their 
baseline for oil, they are using $25 a barrel.
  So anyone who says this is not a valuable thing in the budget because 
of the money that is going to be raised ought to understand the minimum 
that will come in will be twice that amount. People are going to 
base their bids on the value of the oil that might be produced.

  I will speak longer on this at a later date, but I want to say one 
thing. At the time President Carter signed this bill in 1980, the 
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, I was urged to block 
it. President Carter had received about 90 percent of what he wanted in 
this bill. By preserving rights of access to Alaskans, the right to use 
traditional means of transportation, and protection of native peoples 
and communities, Alaskans got 10 percent. The only major difference was 
the 1002 area.
  The amendment that provided for the 1002 area was authored by Senator 
Jackson and Senator Tsongas, not by me. It was authored by them as a 
compromise with Alaska, and it guaranteed that we would be able to 
explore this area that is so valuable to our future. This is the area 
that former President Carter asks Congress now to take back, and some 
members of the House want to turn it into a wilderness area now.
  After we were elected to the majority and getting ready for the 
session in 1981, I was assistant leader. Senator Baker was the majority 
leader. I had calls from home: Change this law and change it now. I 
said, no. In Alaska we have a saying from Robert Service: A promise 
made is a debt unpaid.
  I entered into an agreement with Senator Jackson and Senator Tsongas 
that we would accept what they and President Carter wanted, conditioned 
upon Alaska retaining its rights to explore and develop the Arctic 
coast of Alaska. In 1981, we could have changed it. I was urged to 
change it.
  Now, after 24 years of arguing over this issue, and it has been 
before this Congress and this Senate every year since 1981, I told a 
group the other day I am distressed that I must argue again and again 
for Congress to keep its promise to the Alaskan people. This year I 
will argue that again.
  My mind goes back to those Alaskans--they put a full page ad in the 
paper saying: Ted, come home. You no longer represent Alaska. Come home 
so someone else can change that law and get some of the things we did 
not achieve under the 1980 act.
  Now all we are asking is for the Congress, and particularly this 
Senate, to follow that law to allow us to proceed with this 
development. But what do we face? We face a filibuster, something that 
was unheard of when the oil pipeline was considered. We now have the 
issue of oil exploration and development before us, and in an area even 
more promising than Prudhoe Bay, in my judgment. We know it is a larger 
structure under the Earth. It could contain more oil than even Prudhoe 
Bay, although the estimates are lower.
  When we look at it, the simple question before the Senate, in my 
mind, is, Is this a national security issue? Is the ability to fill the 
Alaskan oil pipeline a national security issue?
  During the Persian Gulf war we sent 2.1 million barrels of oil a day 
to what we call the South 48, the continental U.S. Today we are sending 
900,000. The pipeline is not full. The pipeline cannot be full again 
unless we obtain the oil from the Arctic coast.
  It is still a matter of national security. I challenge my friends who 
want to filibuster this. I challenge the necessity to try to get 60 
votes to make this become a reality. That is why we have to use the 
Budget Act to try to avoid that threat of a filibuster, which did not 
exist in this Chamber on the Alaskan oil pipeline.
  I will be back again and again, because this may be my last stand at 
trying to convince Congress to keep its word. It is getting more 
difficult to serve in a Senate that cannot--cannot, and will not, carry 
out commitments that were made by previous occupants of this body.
  Thank you very much.


                               exhibit 1

                                                 January 24, 2005.
     Hon. Ted Stevens,
     Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Ted: Twenty-six years ago, after leaving the Senate, I 
     was a lead signatory in full-page ads opposing oil 
     exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve that 
     appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. I 
     opposed it because, based on the information then available, 
     I believed that it would threaten the survival of the 
     Porcupine caribou herd and leave huge, long-lasting scars on 
     fragile Arctic lands. Since the, caribou populations in the 
     areas of Prudhoe Bay and the Alaskan pipeline have increased, 
     which demonstrates that the Porcupine herd would not be 
     threatened, and new regulations limiting activities to the 
     winter months and mandating the use of ice roads and 
     directional drilling have vastly reduced the impact of oil 
     operations on the Arctic landscape.
       In light of the above, I have revised my views and now urge 
     approval of oil development in the 1002 Study Area for the 
     following reasons:
       1. With proper management, I don't see that any significant 
     damage to arctic wildlife would result, and none that 
     wouldn't rapidly be repaired once operation ceased.
       2. While I don't buy the oil companies' claim that only 
     2,000 acres would be affected, even if all of the 1.5 
     million-acre Study Area were to lose its pristine quality (it 
     wouldn't), that would still leave 18.1 million acres of the 
     ANWR untouched plus another five million acres in two 
     adjoining Canadian wildlife refuges, or an area about equal 
     to that of the States of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, 
     and New Hampshire combined. In other words, it is simply 
     preposterous to claim that oil development in the Study Area 
     would ``destroy'' the critical values that ANWR is intended 
     to serve.
       3. In light of the above, it is economic and (to a much 
     lesser degree) strategic masochism to deny ourselves access 
     to what could prove our largest source of a vital resource.
       Having visited the Arctic on nine occasions over the past 
     13 years (including a recent camping trip on Alaska's North 
     Slope), I don't think I can be accused of being insensitive 
     to the charms of the Arctic qua Arctic. I just don't see the 
     threat to values I cherish.
           With best regards,
                                                 James L. Buckley.

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I make a point of order a quorum is not 
present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________