The US House of Representatives voted to allow oil drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge as part of a broad energy bill that Democrats said would funnel billions of dollars to highly profitable energy companies while doing little to promote conservation or ease gasoline prices.
The bill's sponsors said oil from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), as much as a million barrels a day, will be needed to help curtail the US' growing dependence on oil imports. Opponents argued the oil wouldn't be available for a decade and even then at levels that would not significantly affect oil prices or imports.
The bill approved late on Wednesday calls for US$8.1 billion in tax breaks over 10 years, most of it going to promote coal, nuclear, oil and natural gas energy industries.
Development of the Alaska refuge has been a contentious issue for nearly a decade. Environmentalists fear a spider web of drilling platforms and pipelines would harm the area's polar bears, caribou, migrating birds and other wildlife.
Senate Democrats have pledged to filibuster any energy bill that would open the refuge to oil companies. A final vote on the energy legislation was expected by the House yesterday.
Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat who offered the ANWR amendment, noted that the bill does nothing to improve the fuel economy of cars, which he said use 70 percent of the country's oil, and that it was wrong "to then turn to the wilderness areas and say we need energy."
An attempt to require automakers to increase fuel economy to a fleet average of 14km per liter over the next decade was defeated 254-177.
Representative Sherwood Boehlert, a Republican who co-sponsored the auto fuel economy proposal, said it would have reduced oil use by 2 million barrels a day -- more than could be taken from ANWR -- by 2020.
He described as "a bunch of nonsense" claims by opponents that the increased fuel economy would cost the auto industry jobs, force consumers to buy smaller cars and reduce automobile safety.
"We don't need to micromanage our auto manufactures," countered Representative Fred Upton, a Republican.
President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Congress to give him an energy bill by summer, including a go-ahead for oil exploration in the Alaska refuge. He said the oil can be recovered "with almost no impact on land and local wildlife" and ANWR's production would amount to nearly half the oil the US now gets from Venezuela.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi accused Bush of trying to exploit people's anxiety over high gas prices to gain support for a bill that she said "was written by energy lobbyists for the benefit of the energy industry."
The House bill also would make it easier to build liquefied natural gas import terminals and extend daylight-saving time by two months to reduce energy use.
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