newsminer.com

WASHINGTON — With no end in sight to rising gasoline prices, the energy debate in Congress continues to amount to little more than election-year bickering.

Republicans are pushing a plan based on boosting domestic supplies of oil and natural gas by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to development.

Democrats, who hold a majority in both chambers, blame the policies of the Bush administration for the energy crunch.

Energy analysts and lobbyist­s doubt either side is serious about moving bipartisan energy legislation before the November elections, especially since Democrats expect to increase their numbers in the 111th Congress.

Rep. Don Young, a longtime supporter of allowing drilling in the ANWR coastal plain, believes voters’ priorities will shift toward favoring more domestic oil production as soaring energy costs continue to hit them in the pocketbook.

“I think there’s already a change in the public mood,” Young said. “We’re seeing the immediate result — the price at the pump ­— but when it filters down to other products, like groceries, I think we’ll see action pretty quick.”

He’s backing an economic plan, along with other Republicans in the House of Representatives, that would open the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of ANWR to development, as well as allow states to open waters between 50 and 200 miles off their coasts to exploration.

The package would also provide tax breaks to spur construction of more nuclear power plants and refineries, and lift the moratorium on oil shale development in Colorado and other Western states.

Republicans released their economic plan Wednesday, but it came as no surprise to their critics.

Kristina Johnson at the Sierra Club said Republicans are recycling the same old “drill everything” rhetoric that has failed before.

“Opening our most fragile coastlines and places like the Arctic Refuge to drilling is not going to cure our oil addiction — it will only feed it,” Johnson said in a prepared statement.

“It’s time to shift gears and start focusing on real, lasting, long-term solutions to our energy crisis. We are addicted to oil, and more drilling just adds to the problem.”

A Democratic plan to impose a windfall profits tax on the five largest U.S. oil companies and eliminate $17 billion in tax breaks, with the revenue going to renewable energy development, has repeatedly failed to get past GOP filibusters, most recently this week in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Democrats have blocked attempts to open more federal areas to drilling.

“The Democrats are doing nothing, nothing, nothing,” Young said. “They have this illusion that they are going to solve the problem with all these exotics.”

Republican leaders are vowing to introduce an avalanche of energy bills in the coming months to force votes on legislation they claim would lower gasoline prices.

“You’re going to see Republicans every single day over the next three or four months try to bring to the floor of the House, proposals that would bring down the price of gasoline,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. “We’re going to make (Democrats) take these votes, because at the end of the day, if we do not have more production ... we can’t bring down gas prices.”

Last month, Young introduced a separate ANWR drilling bill that already has 120 co-sponsors. Young said he thinks that measure has the best chance of getting through Congress.

The House has approved legislation opening ANWR 12 times in Young’s 35 years in Congress, but all but one time it has been defeated in the Senate. President Bill Clinton vetoed ANWR drilling legislation in 1995.

Conservation groups who staunchly oppose opening ANWR insist it will do nothing to ease gasoline prices in the near future.

“Americans understand that we cannot drill our way to energy independence or to any meaningful reduction in the price of oil,” said Deborah Williams, president of Alaska Conservation Solutions and a former Interior Department special assistant for Alaska.

Production from ANWR — estimated at 1 million barrels of oil a day, or roughly 5 percent of U.S. consumption — would take an estimated 10 years to come online, though Young believes it could be done quicker.

More importantly, Young said, it would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign sources of oil and add jobs to the economy.

Williams said producing more fossil fuels will do nothing to wean the nation off its addiction to oil.

“I think the take-home message from our current situation is that we really need to invest in alternatives to oil,” she said.

Increasing energy conservation and energy efficiency would be a much better way to reduce the need for foreign oil imports, Williams said.

The U.S. uses about 21 million barrels of oil a day, nearly half of which is consumed by the transportation sector.

The national average price for regular unleaded was $4.05 a gallon Wednesday, an increase of nearly $1 from a year ago, according to motorist group AAA’s Fuel Gauge Report.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects the average price of gasoline in the Lower 48 will hit a high of $4.15 by August, though the agency expects prices to slide slightly to an average of $3.92 a gallon in 2009.

In Fairbanks, consumers are already paying between $4.13 and $4.28 a gallon to fill their gas tanks.

A recent survey found that Americans now spend more than 6 percent of their income on gasoline, a greater percentage than during the oil crises of the mid-1970s and early 1990s.

It’s only a matter of time before consumers get fed up with paying high gas prices, Young said.

“Realistically, I believe the public will eventually say ‘let’s drill,’” he said.

Williams doesn’t agree.

“I don’t see a call to open ANWR on the lips of Americans,” she said.

Young expects the price of oil to top $200 a barrel by January.

“I may be wrong, but they laughed at me when I said it would go to $100, and look at where we are today,” he said.

Crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange closed Wednesday at $136.38.

Energy analysts and economist predict demand for oil to grow, but they disagree over the direction oil prices are headed.

Recent polls show that the faltering economy, and fuel costs in particular, remains among the top concerns of consumers.