Bush pushes ANWR drilling; Stevens expects Bush to lift Bristol Bay ban

President Bush talked forcefully about the need to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge during a meeting with members of Congress on May 4 according to Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

Bush asked the senators and representatives for a variety of measures to combat rising petroleum and energy prices. Stevens and 14 colleagues met with Bush for almost an hour.

“I commented at length about ANWR myself, as a matter of fact,” Stevens told Alaska reporters.

Stevens said he expects the U.S. House of Representatives will approve ANWR drilling in the next week or two but he hasn’t seen any indication that the Senate would support the idea this year.

The closest recent vote came Dec. 21, when 57 senators voted to stop a filibuster of a defense spending bill to which Stevens had attached an ANWR-drilling amendment. Drilling backers needed 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster and hold a vote on the bill itself.

Of the 57 opponents of the filibuster, four were Democrats. Among the 43 supporters of the filibuster, two were Republicans.

Today, “there are at least two Democratic senators who are talking to us,” Stevens said, in addition to the previous Democratic supporters.

Public pressure could create more supporters, he indicated. Recent polls show growing support for drilling in ANWR, he said.

Stevens said ANWR oil can’t get to market in the short-term. But developing it would combat higher prices in the longer-term, he said.

The federal government’s Energy Information Administration has said that ANWR oil is unlikely to affect gasoline prices much, though. That’s because the oil would represent a small sliver of worldwide crude supply, which has averaged 84 million barrels per day this year.

“They’re just misinformed,” Stevens said of the EIA’s forecast.

ANWR could produce a million barrels per day for 30 years, he said. “That’s a significant amount of oil,” he said.

Still, he said a few minutes later that the price of gasoline is mostly dependent upon crude oil prices, which in turn are “primarily set by foreign governments” that control the vast majority of world supplies. Right now, those foreign governments see that U.S. demand for gasoline has actually increased, despite record high prices, Stevens observed.

“That’s a message to those foreign producers,” he said.

The senator said he also gave Bush a pitch for more oil drilling off Alaska’s continental shelf, in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and in Cook Inlet.

Stevens wants Bush to lift the administration’s policy against offering oil leases in Bristol Bay, as well. Congress has already removed the statutory ban on such leases, and Gov. Frank Murkowski has requested that Bush reverse the administration’s policy. Stevens said he expects Bush will do so.

—The Associated Press