Teamsters blast removal of ANWR from bill

Allen Baker

Petroleum News Contributing Writer

General President James P. Hoffa of the Teamsters union says the pending energy bill is flawed because it doesn’t include provisions to allow oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

Hoffa blamed Senate Energy Chairman Peter V. Domenici, a Republican.

“Senator Domenici claims his bill will create ‘nearly 1 million new jobs’ and hails this as a great achievement. However, Senator Domenici passed up an opportunity to create more than twice that number of new jobs.

“According to a recent study by the National Defense Council Foundation, opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) alone will create over 1 million new jobs — more than Senator Domenici claims will be created by his entire bill,” Hoffa said in a statement from Washington, D.C.

“First this Republican Congress and White House gave workers a jobless recovery, and now they want to give us a jobless energy package,” Hoffa said. “If this bill reaches President Bush’s desk in its current form, I urge the president to veto it.”

Domenici defended the final product, saying, “I believe that when taken as a whole, the public and members of Congress support this, not only as a good plan to give the nation more stable and reliable energy sources but as a major bill that will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, too.”

He lauded provisions in the measure that would provide royalty relief for marginal wells, and keep those producing.

The bill, he noted, also provides $1.5 billion for research on unconventional and technically difficult oil and gas development, along with $1.8 billion for research on clean coal technologies.