Originally published February 6 2006
Oil companies lobbying hard for the right to drill inside Alaska's wildlife refuge
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
An editorial from the Boston Globe details the maneuvers of big oil companies looking for permission to drill inside Alaska's vast Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
THE OIL industry and its royalty-hungry allies in Alaska are so eager to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that they will resort to every possible legislative spitball to win Congress's approval.
First they attached a pro-drilling amendment to the budget reconciliation bill, which cannot be filibustered in the Senate, only to see it rejected by a coalition of Democrats and Republican conservationists in the House.
Now they have included drilling in an appropriations bill for the military, daring opponents of drilling to be seen opposing funds for the nation's men and women in uniform.
Senators seeking to protect the wildlife refuge should call their bluff and block the defense-spending bill until it has been stripped of this provision.
The public yield from the leases sold in the refuge would be split equally between the federal government and Alaska, though there is wording in the provision that would allow the state to sue for a 90 percent share.
The House of Representatives has only recessed, not adjourned, and could easily reconvene later this week to give its approval to a revised defense appropriations bill with the drilling provisions removed.
If Stevens's tactic succeeds and the Senate feels it has to approve the defense funding package even with drilling, the oil industry will lay claim to a coastal plain that is home to polar and grizzly bears, caribou, musk oxen, and other rare species.
That is one more reason that Maine's two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, should be willing to filibuster if necessary to stop the raid on the Arctic coast.
The Arctic and Georges Bank might be thousands of miles apart, but both deserve defenders from every corner of the nation to protect them from Big Oil.
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