Canadians urged to stand on guard for ANWR legislation

Gary Park, PNA Canadian correspondent

Anti-drilling interests in Canada are relieved the U.S. Senate has rejected oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but determined to remain vigilant.

Canada’s Environment Minister David Anderson told reporters March 20 that the Senate vote is “definitely a victory,” a sentiment echoed by Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie, Larry Bagnell, the Yukon Member of Parliament and Gwitch’in leaders in the northern Yukon.

Bagnell said the Bush administration and members of the House of Representatives remain determined to drill the ANWR lands and will keep pressing their case. (See related cover story in the March 23 edition of Petroleum News Alaska.)

War in Iraq could give impetus to the argument for opening the refuge to drilling to help lower U.S. dependence on imported oil, he said. Anderson, who spent the week before the Senate vote lobbying U.S. legislators to reject the idea, warned that the proposal could easily be revived.

He described the attempt to attach the opening of ANWR to a pending federal budget for 2004 as an attempt by the Bush administration to “improperly smuggle” ANWR through the process.

The Canadian government has argued for both countries to provide permanent protection for the wildlife species that straddle the Alaska-Yukon border and has imposed a development ban on areas used by the Porcupine caribou herd on the Canadian side.

Lorraine Peter, a Vuntut Gwitch’in member of the Yukon legislature, said the administrations in Washington and Alaska are unlikely to approve permanent protection, but “we will never give up until that day.”