House Drops Arctic Drilling From Bill
Great Lakes Organizer Gal
the House budget recon bill no longer has Arctic drilling!!!!! Thanks
for everyone's help spreading the word, and getting in calls and
letters. But if the House budget passes, it could still be put back in
during the conference committee. And considering the House budget is
very detrimental to the underpriviledged, we should still get calls in
against the budget - if the House budget goes down, we can rest easy
about Arctic drilling, since it would mean no conference committee.
AP story is as follows......
Nov 9, 10:11 PM EST
House Drops Arctic Drilling From Bill
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House leaders late Wednesday abandoned an attempt to
push through a hotly contested plan to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge
to oil drilling, fearing it would jeopardize approval of a sweeping
budget bill Thursday.
They also dropped from the budget document plans to allow states to
authorize oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts -
regions currently under a drilling moratorium.
The actions were a stunning setback for those who have tried for years
to open a coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)
to oil development, and a victory for environmentalists who have
lobbied hard against the drilling provisions. President Bush has made
drilling in the Alaska refuge one of his top energy priorities.
The House Rules Committee formalized the change late Wednesday when it
issued the terms of the debate when the House takes up the budget
package on Thursday.
The decision to drop the the ANWR drilling language came after GOP
moderates said they would oppose the budget if it was kept in the bill.
The offshore drilling provision was also viewed as too contentious and
a threat to the bill, especially in the Senate.
Last week, the Senate included ANWR drilling in its version of the
budget, so the matter will have to be thrashed out in negotiations
between the Senate and House, if the budget is approved by the House.
Protection of the Alaska refuge from oil companies has been championed
by enviornmentalists for years. The House repeatedly has approved
drilling in the refuge as part of broad energy legislation, only to see
their effort blocked each time by the threat of a filibuster in the
Senate.
The budget bill is immune from fillibuster, but drilling proponents
suddenly found it hard to get the measure accepted by a majority of the
House.
That's because Democrats heartily oppose the overall budget bill,
giving House GOP opponents of drilling in the Arctic enough leverage to
have the matter killed.
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