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Toohey sees little chance to stop Clinton from designating ANWR national monument Arctic Power’s executive director hard at work educating Congressional members; sees U.S. dependence on foreign oil as ANWR drilling’s best hope Kay H. Cashman PNA Editor-in-Chief
Drilling on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is once again a nationally debated issue. The public’s interest has been spiked because gasoline prices are at their highest level in a decade. At the same time, U.S. oil reserves at an all-time low.
Presidential hopefuls Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush are talking about ANWR regularly. Vice President Gore wants to see the entire reserve closed forever to oil drilling, while former oil executives Texas governor Bush and his vice presidential nominee Dick Cheney say the 1.5 million acre along the reserve’s coastal plain should be opened to help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Cam Toohey, Arctic Power’s executive director, told PNA Sept. 27 that his organization does a daily news search for ANWR. He said prior to Gore’s call to President Clinton to tap the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, ANWR was mentioned on average eight times a day in articles and editorials. Since that announcement, ANWR mentions have gone up to more than 25 mentions a day “with increased detail,” Toohey said.
But Toohey does not expect ANWR to come up again this session, as “Congress is busy getting the spending bills done and going home.”
Effort to stop monument status under way Toohey and lobbyist Roger Herrera are staying busy, he said, working with the media. At the same time, Arctic Power is conducting its “election target state program,” which Toohey said is designed to educate U.S. House and Senate candidates on the ANWR issue. “The greens are doing the same,” he said.
In regard to former President Jimmy Carter’s call for President Clinton to designate ANWR as a national monument, Toohey said, “we expect Clinton to designate and are basically defenseless, but we have done a couple of things. One is we are using the recent Alaska Legislature’s legal opinion on the ‘no more’ clause to show policy makers nationwide that Clinton can not legally declare ANWR a monument. Secondly, we have filed a Freedom of Information Act Request with the Department of Interior for any documents related to their consideration of declaring a national monument.”
There has been no response from Interior. The request was filed in early September, Toohey said. Hope in high oil prices “If the price of oil debate continues and a strong majority of the public begins to believe that domestic production/ANWR is an answer then there might be a slight chance (5 percent) that Clinton might not declare a monument. Remember he is working on his environmental legacy and it will not be complete until he has an Alaskan monument,” Toohey said.
In the meantime, Arctic Power is planning “for 2001, a new administration, new House and Senate members and a crude oil price environment that is looking for supply answers closer to home,” he said.
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