In Case You Missed It . . . Articles From Today Outlining How The Polar Bear Issue Threatens Future Alaska Oil & Resource Development

A Bush administration decision on listing polar bears as endangered species and victims of global warming has erupted into a separate battle on Capitol Hill to block oil and gas exploration in order to protect the animals' arctic hunting grounds.

The administration delayed its January deadline on whether to list the bears, but is moving ahead with a separate move Feb. six to issue new permits for oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea, which Democrats and environmentalists say they oppose.

Representative Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, is pushing legislation to halt the drilling-rights sales, saying the area may be needed as critical habitat for the bears' survival.

"Robert Frost wrote about 2 roads diverging in the wood, and here we have the Bush administration looking down 2 roads with regard to the polar bear," Mr. Markey said. "Down one road lies the survival of the polar bear and the orderly consideration of oil drilling and global warming and common sense. Down the other road, too often traveled by this administration, lies regulatory lunacy and a blatant disregard for moral responsibility."

Mr. Markey said the drilling-lease sales should be stopped to "protect the polar bear, and the rest of us, from global warming."

Bush administration officials said the issues are separate and that the delay on whether to list the polar bears is the result of a new government study that requires further public input. The lease sale is the culmination of a five-year study that was approved by Congress last year.

"The leasing project was delivered to Congress last year. They knew we were looking at polar bears the same time it was delivered," said an Interior Department official. "They had the opportunity then to submit legislation saying we can't do this. And, we heard nothing from Congress when we submitted the leasing drill project 5 years ago."

"At this point, we have no intention of stopping that lease sale," the official said.

The polar bear has no natural predator, and there has been no significant loss in population, but this precedent-setting decision on federal protection will say whether the Endangered Species Act allows the government to determine that global warming poses a threat to an animal's habitat that could lead to a decrease in numbers or extinction.

"We have never done this before. That is why there is a lot of care being taken on this decision," the Interior Department official said.

One House Republican leadership aide said environmentalists want the polar-bear listing to stop oil drilling in Alaska, "just like they used the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest to shut down the timber industry."

Republicans said Mr. Markey's bill would block production of 15 billion barrels of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Representative Don Young, Alaska Republican and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Mr. Markey's bill would allow the federal government to use the Endangered Species Act to regulate coal plants and other industries that emit so-called greenhouse gases nationwide.

"This could be a severe threat to our domestic energy production efforts and countrywide energy security," Mr. Young said. "This is alarming."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080124/NATION/66384129/1002

- Audrey Hudson, The Washington Times, January 24, 2008

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CNSNews.Com

Alaska Oil Drilling Delay Could Cost $3 Trillion, Lawmaker Says
By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
January 24, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - The top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee said legislation to delay the sale of land in Alaska for oil and gas exploration would hinder the U.S. economy.

In a letter to Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.) late Tuesday, Representative Don Young (R-Alaska) said he was "disappointed" by Markey's efforts to block oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and more recently in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lease 193 along the Chukchi Sea.

Markey's bill would delay the sale -- currently scheduled for Feb. six -- until after the Department of Interior makes a decision on whether to classify the polar bear as an endangered species. Lease 193 is a core part of the polar bear's habitat.

"It's a continuation of his longstanding opposition to developing domestic energy, not only in Alaska, but throughout many regions of the United States," said Steve Hansen, Republican communications director for the House Natural Resources Committee.

"It's bewildering when you consider the fact that we are continuing to import domestic energy and it's harming our economy, and yet at the same time members of the Democratic leadership are saying they want to work on an economic stimulus plan while Mr. Markey is doing everything he can to continue the downward spiral of the economic situation here by another attempt to stop domestic energy production," he told Cybercast News Service.

According to the letter, "OCS lease sale 193 is estimated to contain 15 billion barrels of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, for a combined total of 27.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent. ANWR is estimated to hold another 10.4 billion barrels of oil, for a total of 38.2 billion barrels of oil.

"This would almost double the total U.S. proven reserves of oil," it states. "Lease Sale 193 and ANWR represent nearly $3 trillion to the U.S. economy, if we choose to develop them."

Young also noted in the letter that people in Markey's home state of Massachusetts have been hit hard by rising energy prices, noting that former Representative Joe Kennedy has been working with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to get oil from Citgo to help heat homes in the United States.

"ANWR and Lease Sale 193 contain 36,000 times as much energy as Citgo, Hugo Chavez and our former colleague are providing for the poor and displaced in America," he said.

Hansen added that if oil exploration is blocked, it "means we have to go abroad to get this energy. Therefore, we lose U.S. jobs, our money is going abroad, [and] other governments are benefiting from this. It's not an ideal situation where we're sitting on vast untapped oil reserves. Yet the president of our country has to go to OPEC nations and ask them to help us with oil."

But Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman for the majority staff of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said, "It's not a great project to try to drill our way to energy independence.

"Some are arguing that we basically have no choice, but to keep on drilling, drilling, drilling at any cost to keep feeding our addiction is just not the proper choice," Burnham-Snyder said.

"Markey was the original House author and arguably the biggest proponent for the recent energy bill that raised fuel economy requirements by 40 percent and increased the amount of renewable fuels we're using grown here in America, not drilled and brought in from abroad," he added.

Burnham-Snyder said the combination of stricter fuel requirements and diverse energy sources will "save us twice the amount of oil that we currently import from the Persian Gulf."

He also told Cybercast News Service that the letter "isn't quite accurate."

"Chairman Markey's legislation wouldn't actually prevent the Chukchi Sea lease sale or any oil and gas drilling from occurring," Burnham-Snyder said.

"It would just simply ensure that the Interior Department would make a decision on how best to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act 1st and then conduct an oil and gas lease sale in that 30 million acres of the polar bear habitat - which was supposed to be the original order of how Interior was going to do things."

Hansen added that this sale does not disregard environmental concerns. "Alaskans are the best caretakers of Alaska, we care about our wildlife and the impacts that any energy development has up there," he said. "We have the highest environmental requirements in the world up there.

"No energy production would go forth unless it could meet these very stringent environmental requirements that not only the federal government has established, but the state of Alaska, the people of Alaska, and the people that live in the local communities have that are directly in the areas impacted by any energy production," said Hansen.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200801/POL20080124b.html

- Monisha Bansal, CNSNews.com, January 24, 2008

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The Anchorage Daily News

Young warns against halting Chukchi leases

By ERIKA BOLSTAD
ebolstad@adn.com | ebolstad@adn.com

Published: January 24th, 2008 12:13 AM
Last Modified: January 24th, 2008 12:53 AM

WASHINGTON -- Postponing the sale of oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea to consider polar bear habitat could do irreparable harm to Alaska's economy, U.S. Representative Don Young warned Wednesday in a letter.

The Alaska Republican told the chairman of a House global warming committee, Representative Ed Markey, D-Mass, that it's imperative for Countrywide energy security that the sales go forward next month.

"The choice for Americans is simple: do we want to send $3 trillion to foreigners, or get off our duffs and use our own energy and keep the money here at home?" Young wrote.

Young also told Markey that he is "afraid that the people of Massachusetts will continue to suffer from an economy battered by higher energy prices and our increasing dependence on unreliable foreign sources for our energy supplies."

"The energy in Alaska you oppose would fill all of the needs of the people of your state for about 279 years, and create hundreds of thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars in royalties and taxes -- instead of being replaced by foreign oil and foreign jobs," Young said.

Markey's response had the same tongue-in-cheek tone as Young's letter.

"The people of Massachusetts are flattered by the attention to their welfare given by the distinguished gentleman from Alaska," Markey said in a statement. "It is only fair that I reciprocate by continuing to fight to protect the polar bear, an icon of the Arctic, that is one of the reasons that Alaska is so special to all Americans."

Markey filed legislation last week asking the Interior Department to hold off on the Chukchi lease sale, scheduled for Feb. 6, until it had determined whether to list polar bears as threatened under the endangered species act.

Markey also held a hearing last week questioning why the U.S.F.W.S. postponed its decision whether to list polar bears until after the Feb. six oil and gas lease sale by the Minerals Management Service. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne oversees both Fish and Wildlife and Minerals Management.

STEVENS, MURKOWSKI OPPOSE LISTING

The state's congressional delegation is unified in its opposition to listing polar bears as threatened. Senator Lisa Murkowski has spoken personally to Kempthorne to raise her objections, said spokesman Kevin Sweeney. And Senator Ted Stevens "has real concerns about the listing of polar bears," spokesman Aaron Saunders said. Specifically, the senator is worried about the effect on future oil and gas development, Saunders said.

If the Bush administration classifies the polar bears as threatened, they would be the 1st species to make the list based on loss of habitat from the effects of global warming. Scientists with the U.S.G.S. estimate that the shrinking sea ice habitat of the bears could lead to a loss of two-thirds of their population by mid-century.

The Interior Department hasn't reviewed Markey's bill or taken a position on it, said spokesman Chris Paolino. Environmentalist have questioned the timing of the leases and the polar bear decision, but the Interior Department continues to maintain that one has nothing to do with the other. Scientists with the U.S.G.S. have said that restricting oil and gas development or the subsistence hunting of polar bears would not be enough to prevent population declines.

"We don't intend to change the timetable of the lease," Paolino said.

Dale Hall, the director of the U.S.F.W.S., is expected to testify again on the issue next week in front of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/292425.html

- Erika Bolstad, The Anchorage Daily News, January 24, 2008