Senator Murkowski Pushes to Open ANWR on Senate Floor
SENATOR MURKOWSKI PUSHES TO OPEN ANWR ON SENATE FLOOR
Tonight, Senator Lisa Murkowski went to the Senate Floor to push for the continued inclusion of ANWR revenue in the FY06 Budget Resolution. During the debate on Sen. Maria Cantwell's (D-WA) amendment to strike ANWR from the budget, Sen. Murkowski said the following:
"With the potential that we have in ANWR right now - to suggest, that this amount of oil is not going to help this country, is akin to suggesting that all of the oil that we receive from East Texas wasn't worth it because it alone wasn't able to sustain this country, and alone it wasn't able to give us the energy independence that we need. Similarly, discounting ANWR's likely oil is like saying that we as a nation should never have bothered opening up the Prudhoe Bay oil field
"Let's talk about the economics of it. In terms of our ability to stabilize our oil prices we will be generating more than $30 billion in federal revenues, probably several billion dollars within four years of opening ANWR. We are also talking about our deficit as we're dealing with the budget here - opening ANWR will be reducing the balance of our payments of deficit because we're not going to be buying as much oil overseas. Last year alone we paid nearly $166 billion to buy oil overseas. This is a quarter of our trade deficit. Further, American farmers alone lost $6.2 billion because of higher fuel and fertilization costs. So we recognize. We've got an opportunity to make a difference
"My colleagues on both sides of the aisle have talked a lot about the effect (of opening ANWR to oil and gas exploration) on the environment. I live there. My family lives there. I'm the last person in the world that wants to see my state spoiled. I want to make sure that what we do when it comes to development is going to be done in balance with our environment. And you know what? We figured out how to do that on the North Slope. We have seen a tenfold increase in the Central Arctic caribou herd since Prudhoe was opened 30 years ago
"I challenge anyone anywhere to come up with more stringent standards when it comes to development and Alaska will beat them every time. And I will suggest to you that we need to be global environmentalists. If we're not taking the oil form ANWR, we will still get oil from somewhere else. And if we don't take it in an area where we know we're going to monitor it and do it correctly, it will come to the U.S. from overseas, from Russia, from Venezuela, from Africa where they don't care for their environment. So, to use the phrase from the other side we need to "think globally but act locally." ANWR is the perfect of example to do just that."
Debate on the amendment to strike ANWR from the FY06 Budget Resolution will continue tomorrow, Wednesday, March 16.
http://murkowski.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=233601