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vauge · 03-17-05, 02:22 PM

UPDATE

Source: seatlepi

Quote:

WASHINGTON -- With a hard-fought Senate vote yesterday clearing the way, supporters of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge said survey teams could arrive on the harsh landscape within a year and leases for tapping its significant deposits of oil and natural gas could be sold as soon as 2007.

And according to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, if all goes according to plan, oil and natural gas could be flowing from ANWR in seven to 10 years.

Those predictions, which once seemed unthinkable, emerged as far more likely in the wake of a 51-49 Senate vote to allow drilling for oil and natural gas in a protected part of the Alaskan wilderness. The vote was a major victory for President Bush and his supporters in business and elsewhere who had long advocated drilling in ANWR as a way to ease the nation's dependence on foreign supplies.

The breakthrough came after two days of heavy lobbying on both sides of an emotional issue that has dominated environmental politics for nearly a decade. Until yesterday, opponents had always been able to stop legislation to open ANWR, an ecologically rich and largely untouched area of northern Alaska that defenders said is far too valuable to threaten with development.