Lisa Murkowski

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we will proceed at 10:30 with the swearing in of Senator-designate Menendez, but we do have housekeeping matters to take up. I ask unanimous consent when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Friday, January 20, for a pro forma session only and that Senators be permitted to introduce bills on that day until the hour of 11 a.m. I further ask consent that the Senate adjourn until Tuesday, January 24, at 10 a.m. for a pro forma session and that committees be permitted to file legislative and executive items until 5 p.m. that day.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask consent following the pro forma session on Tuesday, the Senate stand in adjournment until 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, January 25. I further ask that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved, and the Senate then proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, we will be in session for a very brief period this morning. In a few minutes, the President pro tempore will administer the oath of office to Senator-designate Menendez. Following that swearing in, we will have a couple of housekeeping matters. Then we will adjourn for the day. On behalf of the leader, I will have more to say on the schedule over the next week in the closing remarks.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, what ANWR represents to this country is energy security, national security, from the perspective of reducing our vulnerability on foreign sources of oil. When we talk about vulnerability in this country, and recognizing the vulnerability and the exposure of our men and women who are serving us over in Iraq, over in Afghanistan, we have to do everything we possibly can in this country to provide for their protection. Eighty percent of the Government's oil consumption is by our military. We need to keep this in mind. If we can do anything more to help with our domestic production so that we can decrease this reliance, we need to do so. What ANWR offers to us is energy security, domestic security in the sense of jobs, and truly environmental security. I need to stress that. We have been doing a responsible job up North for the past 30 years. We want to continue that, to fill the pipeline that is now about half capacity. Let me amplify a bit on why ANWR is so important for this Nation. Since we debated ANWR during the budget resolution process this spring, we have finished a 14-year-effort to craft a new comprehensive energy bill. In that bill we have provided incentives and tax breaks to increase renewable energy: wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, ocean energy supplies. We promoted, by tax breaks, the purchase of hybrid and alternate clean cars to cut fuel consumption. We also mandated a doubling of the production of ethanol to help displace foreign oil. We hiked the efficiency standards for a host of appliances to reduce electricity demand--hopefully by 40 percent, saving enough electricity to equal the output of 170 new 300-megawatt power plants. We promoted new technology, proposing to spend $3 billion to develop new hydrogen- fueled cars and to perfect the next generation of nuclear power. We also made it easier to import more natural gas to ease our pending supply shortage. We approved $5.6 billion in tax breaks to promote energy efficiency and the growth of alternative fuels--more than twice what we spent to promote oil and gas production. But outside of some minor changes that may speed oil leasing in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska--the Nation's last designated place for petroleum production--and a few very minor regulatory changes, we did little to directly increase domestic oil and gas production. We delayed that action until now, when we hopefully will permit oil development from a tiny portion of the Arctic coastal plain in my home State of Alaska. ANWR oil will certainly help stabilize our energy prices while generating more than $36 billion in Federal revenues within 20 years-- $2.5 billion according to this reconciliation bill--money that is vital given our $319 billion deficit for fiscal year 2005 and the recent CBO forecast that we will still face a $314 billion deficit this year, not counting spending to counter the effects of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. While both numbers are down, we clearly need more revenues. ANWR will reduce our balance of payments deficit because we won't be buying as much oil overseas. Last year we paid $166 billion to buy oil overseas--a quarter of our ballooning trade deficit. We are paying even more this year. Keeping those billions a year in America that ANWR oil production will equal at current prices is important. It will produce hundreds of thousands of American jobs in most every State, with estimates ranging from a high of over 1 million total jobs to a low of 735,000. These are jobs mostly in the lower 48 States; 12,000 jobs in Washington State; 80,000 jobs in California; 48,000 jobs in New York; 34,200 in Pennsylvania; 34,000 jobs in Florida, 5,500 jobs in Arkansas, even 2,700 jobs in Hawaii, our fellow non-contiguous sister State to the south, according to forecasts by Wharton Econometrics Forecasting Associates. It is because of these jobs and the other economic benefits, that so many groups support ANWR development, from many in organized labor to farmers, and from truckers to manufacturers, all of whom know that ANWR oil will help stabilize everything from the cost of spring planting and fall harvesting to the thousands of products made from oil: from antihistamines to compact discs and from heart replacement valves to shampoo. That is why groups from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Americans for Tax Reform, from the Alaska Gas Association to the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, and unions such as the International Union of Operating Engineers, the Seafarers International Union, the Teamsters, the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, the Laborers' International Union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, and the Building and Construction Trades Department all are supporting ANWR's opening. According to USGS estimates, ANWR's Coastal Plain has an even chance containing the second largest oil field in North America. During this debate opponents may well again repeat that there isn't enough oil there to be worth developing, that it only represents a tiny supply or only will decrease our dependence on foreign oil by a few percent. Those arguments are utter nonsense. It is like saying we should never have produced the East Texas oil fields since the area only contained 5.3 billion barrels--a half to a third of ANWR's likely production. East Texas has produced oil, created jobs and protected our national security the past 75 years of through WWII, and Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. ANWR production is likely to provide all the oil that South Dakota will need for 499 years. It is likely to provide all the oil that Minnesota will need for 84 years, for New York for 34 years, for California for 16 years. That is a lot of oil. When you consider that the American Farm Bureau Federation reports that American farmers in the 2003-2004 planting season lost $6.2 billion in income because of higher fuel and fertilizer costs--farmers facing an even bleaker price picture this fall given high prices and drought--then it's clear that all the oil and gas ANWR may produce will be precious to help hold down or reduce those costs in the future. Remember that ANWR's oil would have offset the oil that we lost in the Gulf of Mexico because of hurricane damage--oil that could well have prevented prices from skyrocketing at the pump this summer and fall. Discounting ANWR's likely oil is also like saying we as a nation should never have opened the neighboring Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska because Prudhoe Bay would only supply us with a 3-year supply of oil. Prudhoe Bay has provided America with up to a quarter of our domestic oil supply for the past 28 years. It has already saved us from spending more than $200 billion to buy imported oil and new technology has consistently raised the amount of oil the field will produce. Initially Prudhoe was expected to produce only 35 percent of its oil. Now it's likely to produce more than 16.5 billion barrels--65 percent of its oil in place. The same increase in production might occur at ANWR and could raise production totals to between 10 and 27 billion barrels--the mean being nearly 18 billion barrels, if it happens. We know industry has spent about $40 billion on the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the wells and production facilities at Prudhoe Bay in the past three decades--78 percent of that spending going to states in the lower 48. From just 1980 to 1994 California businesses received $3.2 billion in work because of Alaska oil development, Washington State firms $1.7 billion, New York $680 million, Minnesota businesses $100 million. There is no question that ANWR oil development will be good for the country's economy and its national security. But it also will be good for the global environment and it won't harm Alaska's environment, wildlife or beautiful landscape. Let me shock those on the other side of this issue. As a life-long Alaskan, a mother with two sons with a family that loves the outdoors, let me say again I would be the first to oppose ANWR's opening if I had any concerns about what oil development will do to our landscape, our air, our water and our wildlife. But I don't. I have been to Prudhoe Bay, have seen the impacts of oil there and know that Prudhoe's development has not damaged Alaska's environment. And I know that by using 21st century technology and advanced engineering that has been perfected since the field's construction 30 years ago, that ANWR can be developed safely and the environment even better protected. First let's look again at Prudhoe's experience. There was much concern that development there would harm the environment and damage the Central Arctic Caribou herd that lives in the field. Neither happened. The Central Arctic herd continues to calve and nurse their young in the area's oil fields. The herd has grown from 3,000 animals in 1974 to nearly 32,000 today. This 10-fold increase shows that caribou and oil production can co-exist quite nicely, thank you. Wildlife studies have shown that several bird species have grown since the field was built--specifically brant, snow geese and spectacled eiders, although as the National Academy of Sciences reported last year some nesting distributions may have changed and brant and eiders in general are having problems, perhaps because of reach warmer climate conditions. I'm sure someone will mention polar bears. I am quite prepared to talk about the very healthy condition of Alaska polar bear stocks. For the moment let me say that only two bears over the past 38 years have been harmed in Alaska because of oil development and with new infrared detection equipment, we can make sure that no bears will be disturbed during denning by ANWR's development. Americans can be assured that opening the coastal plain will have even less impact on Alaska's environment. That is because new technology has reduced the impact on the environment and the footprint of development. 3-D and 4-D seismic that I mentioned earlier now allow us to locate oil without surface disruption. Underground directional drilling allow us to recover oil 4 miles away and hopefully up to 8 miles away within a few years, meaning that only a tiny portion of surface habitat will be disturbed between drill sites. The size of so-called well pads has decreased 70 percent to 88 percent since Prudhoe Bay. The proof can be seen in that the Tarn field was opened in 1998 disturbing just 6.7 acres. Not the 65 acres for a well-pad at Prudhoe Bay. The Alpine field that we in the Senate visited in March, today produces 120,000 barrels a day from a central well pad that is just 43 acres in size--67 if you count the attached air strip. Ice roads today are used for winter drilling--roads that melt without any disturbance to the tundra in summer when the animals arrive on the coastal plain. New composite mats also can be used to reduce gravel fill and dust. And pipelines technically can be placed underground to prevent any surface disturbance to animals or birdlife, although there are no problems with above ground pipelines. There won't be a ``spider web'' of development as some have claimed. Drilling restrictions will prevent noise in summer that might scare a mother caribou, and as insurance, development can be barred by the Secretary of the Interior to guarantee habitat for a core caribou caving area or for bird nesting areas. Opponents often say that development will destroy ``America's Serengeti.'' We are proposing to limit the ``footprint'' of development to just 2,000 acres of Federal land. That is no more land than a moderately-sized American farm--the average farm in North Dakota is 1,400 acres--while an area larger than all of South Carolina will remain wild and protected. With the new technology it will be possible to leave nearly 100 square miles of undisturbed habitat between well sites. The animals of the African veld in Tanzania should be so lucky. Opponents of opening ANWR always address two more issues: that oil spills on the North Slope of Alaska has shown that development should not be allowed, and that air quality from energy production should also prevent development. Let me briefly respond to both concerns. Concerning oil spills opponents list numbers claiming a high number of spills, but fail to mention that companies have to report spills of most any substance more than a gallon in size, whether of water, or oil or chemicals. According to the Alaska Department Environmental Conservation, there have been an average of 263 spills on the North Slope yearly during the past decade, but the average oil spill was just 89 gallons--2 barrels of oil--and that 94 percent of that oil was totally cleaned up. By comparison the rest of the state had seven times more spills per year than the Prudhoe Bay oil field. According to the National Academy of Science's 2003 study, if you look at all oil spills from 1977 through 1999, 84 percent of all spills were less than 2 barrels in size and only 454 barrels of oil per year may have been released to the environment, compared to 378,000 barrels of oil that enter North American waters as a result of just urban runoff--those drips at filling stations and other spills. That may be less oil than enters the Alaska environment naturally because of oil seeps on the North Slope. Concerning air quality, we have heard mention that Prudhoe Bay has destroyed the air quality. There is no truth to those claims. It is true that the nation's largest oil field does add emissions into the air, mostly nitrogen dioxide and larger particulate matter. But field meets the stringent air quality standards in place for Class II attainment areas--areas where Congress has set higher standards to prevent any Significant Deterioration (PSD) of air quality. Looking at nitrogen dioxide, in its worse year, 2000, such emissions were only a quarter of the public health standard for the area. For sulfur dioxide, in its worse year 1997, the Prudhoe Bay field emitted 16 times less sulfur dioxide than the public health standard and only a quarter of the tough standards for a Class II area. For carbon monoxide, during its worse period, one eight-hour period in 1991 near Kuparuk, the field was 35 times lower than the public health standard. I could continue with particulate matter but the story is the same. The truth is that the Prudhoe Bay area--the nation's largest oil field--releases eight times less nitrogen dioxide into the air than the metropolitan Washington area does per year, according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. More important the releases have no impacts on the environment. There is no evidence that the releases are affecting the Arctic environment or the environment downwind. The air quality complaints are groundless. To environmentalists who say we are harming Alaska, please remember that an area of more than 192 million acres, the size of all the states that stretch from Maine to Orlando, Fla.--almost the entire East Coast--are already protected in parks, refuges and forests in Alaska. We aren't proposing to touch any of those areas. Now let me explain why I suggested that ANWR development is actually good for the global environment. Right now America is using about 20 million barrels of oil a day and importing more than 11 million barrels of that oil. That oil is increasingly coming from countries with less stringent environmental standards than America. America has the toughest environmental standards in the world. We should be doing all we can to satisfy our oil needs at home, not exporting environmental issues overseas to Russia or Colombia or Venezuela. Secondly, even with greater efforts at conservation--efforts that I strongly supported in the just-passed comprehensive energy bill--we are still going to need oil. We could park every car and truck in America tomorrow and we still will need ANWR's oil to meet our needs for plastics, road construction materials, roofing materials, and those petrochemical feed stocks that are the stuff of everything from soft contact lenses to aspirin and from house paint to toothpaste. And in case anyone tries to argue that opening ANWR will somehow increase carbon dioxide and maybe, perhaps, increase global warming, let me say that if we don't open ANWR we will need to import ever more oil to America in foreign tankers. Those tankers will need to travel tens of thousands of miles farther to reach American shores. They run on diesel fuel and will produce far more carbon dioxide than transporting Alaskan oil to lower 48 ports will. Thirdly, if we don't open ANWR we will need to import ever more oil. When we reach 68 percent dependency we will need the equivalent of 30 giant super tankers, each loaded with 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day, to dock at U.S. ports. That will be more than 10,000 shiploads of oil a year, most likely foreign-flagged and foreign-crewed tankers passing our rocky coastlines and entering our crowded harbors. Those ships create many more times the environmental risk to America's coasts than developing our own energy, using American technology, American doubled-hulled ships, whose performance is governed by American law. For years the mantra of environmentalists has been ``Think globally, act locally.'' The best action we can take locally is to produce more of the oil we consume every day. Let me briefly touch on whether Alaska Natives continue to support oil development on the coastal plain. Earlier this spring some questioned that support because of a petition that was signed by some in Kaktovik--the only village directly in the ANWR area, an area where 78 percent of residents, 2 years ago supported oil development, according to a community poll. While I have letters signed by a number of those who signed the anti-development petition--letters saying they were misled by the petition sponsor and that they do still support ANWR's on-shore oil development--let me just reassure my colleagues that Alaska Natives clearly support oil development in my State. I have a letter from all members of the Kaktovik City Council and from its Mayor sporting oil development. The latest statewide public opinion poll in Alaska by Dittman Research finds that only 23 percent of Alaskans oppose ANWR development. In this day and age, getting more than 70 percent of any body anywhere in support of anything is a major achievement. The Alaska Federation of Natives--that is the umbrella for all Native groups in the State--is clearly on record supporting ANWR development. I visited Kaktovik during August to see for myself the current level of support or concern with development in the coastal plain. I can say clearly that while villagers would like us to solve their Native land allotment concerns by next year--the 100th anniversary of when the land allotments were authorized and want us in Congress to protect subsistence whaling--and while they clearly want to be consulted on development and aided to avoid any impacts--that they generally support environmentally sensitive development onshore on the coastal plain. Natives on the North Slope of Alaska have seen for themselves the impacts of oil development and have seen the benefits that oil can bring: good jobs, better schools, improved health care, modern water and sewer systems, adequate housing and better opportunities for their children and their grandchildren. Natives who have lived in the area for thousands of years simply want to be consulted and to have their wisdom reflected in the regulatory decisions made to control energy development. That is a perfectly reasonable position for local residents to take and I certainly will support them to make sure their knowledge and wisdom are listened to. They simply want respect and we in government clearly should respect their knowledge as oil development proceeds. I As long as we include reasonable environmental and regulatory protections, Alaska Natives support responsible oil development on the Arctic coastal plain. And this bill provides $35 million in impact aid, money that hopefully will alleviate any impacts from ANWR development and assist Alaska Native Corporations and their members who live along the Trans- Alaska oil pipeline corridor. This amendment is largely based on an ANWR stand-alone-bill, S. 1891, that I introduced this fall. So that there is no mistaking the clear intent of this legislation as it is considered for final passage, let me state the following: After 18 years of debate since release of the final environmental impact statement covering Arctic oil development in 1987, more than 50 hearings, dozens of field trips, passage of ANWR legislation in the 106th Congress, and passage of ANWR-opening legislation by the House in the 108th Congress and by both the House and Senate in the reconciliation act process in the 109th Congress, it is absolutely clear that it is the intent of Congress--should this bill pass--that oil and gas development be permitted in the entire ANWR coastal plain on an expedited basis. That means that development should be permitted on the Federal lands as permitted by this legislation without delay in order to be producing revenues within 5 years. It is clearly the intent of Congress as spelled out in the provision, that the existing LEIS is sufficient to cover new preleasing activities and that it is the intent of Congress that the LEIS is still sufficient to govern oil development with modest updating. Concerning the 92,000 acres of native-owned lands, lands owned by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation and the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation, Congress by this division in the Defense appropriations bill is authorizing immediate development as allowed by the 1983 land trade that allowed Natives to select lands in the coastal plain and as allowed by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Specifically, there should be no question that it is the intent of Congress that the phrase ``prelease activity'' is intended to include all activities that normally take place prior to a lease sale, including surface geological exploration or seismic exploration. The Secretary has promulgated regulations governing surface geological and geophysical exploration programs for the refuge's coastal plain pursuant to Section 1002 of ANILCA. These regulations, set out at Part 37 of Title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations, are consistent with the LEIS and include adequate environmental safeguards. Although the primary purpose of those regulations was to governor the exploration necessary to produce the ``1002'' report to Congress, they include provision for additional surface geological and geophysical exploration ``if necessary to correct data deficiencies or to refine or improve data or information already gathered.'' 50 CFR Section 37.11. This authority is adequate for the Secretary to process any requests for permits for prelease surface exploration, but is not the exclusive authority for processing such requests. This amendment provides independent and sufficient authority for the Secretary, acting through the Bureau of Land Management, to issue prelease permits for surface geological exploration or seismic exploration. Permits for prelease surface exploration, whether or not pursuant to Part 37 of Title 50, that incorporate environmental safeguards similar to those in Part 37 of Title 50 are consistent with the LEIS and the requirements of this section. Another area I would like to clarify is relating to the provision that allows the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation to begin oil production from their lands. It should be clear that the section in this bill removes the prohibition in Section 1003 of ANILCA against the production of oil and gas and leasing or other development leading to production of oil and gas for lands within the ``1002'' Coastal Plain Area, as depicted on the map prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey entitled ``Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 1002 Coastal Plain Area,'' dated September 2005, including both Federal lands private lands, primarily owned by Alaska Native corporations, and now or hereafter acquired within the 1002 Coastal Plain Area and preserves all rights of access to those lands, including for oil and gas pipelines, provided for in Sections 1110 and 1111 of ANILCA. There is much more that I can say. For now let me just say that both Republicans and Democrats agree that American independence on foreign oil threatens our national security, and yet, we continue to import over half of our oil needs. And we haven't yet done enough to reverse that trend. Only by passing ANWR, in conjunction with the other environmental steps we have already taken in the energy bill, can we produce more oil from American soil, with American workers; oil that will be used to heat American homes and power America's farms and industries. In a sentence, ANWR is a part of the solution to America's dependence on foreign energy sources. Not the entire solution, but one real part of it. The one part not yet addressed by Congress this year. ANWR is the place and the time is now. I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, thank you. It is December 21. This is the shortest day of the year. On Alaska's North Slope today, it is pretty dark. The Sun went down, I was told, November 18 at 1:40 p.m. It is not going to rise again until January 23 at 1:01 p.m. Today's weather forecast on the North Slope is for it to be about 30 degrees below zero. Most of us would be hunkering down and hiding out from the cold and the dark. But right now Alaska's North Slope and the oil activities are humming because this is the time of year we do our work up there. And why do we do it? Do we do it because we like the cold, we like to be in the cold and in the dark? No. We do it because this is how we provide for the protections for the area. We explore and we work when the tundra is frozen. This is when we build the ice bridges. This is when we do the exploration. We do it because we care for the environment up there. It hurts to hear some of the discussion and some of the argument and some of the misinformation about how we in Alaska derive our resources, how we pull the oil from the ground up North. We have been providing about 20 percent of this Nation's domestic oil from Prudhoe Bay for the past 30 years, and we have been doing a good job of it. We have been providing not only for the environment, we have been providing the jobs, and we have been providing the revenues. We have been helping this country in an effort to keep our balance of payments from booming even more than they already are. We are doing what this country needs when it comes to domestic production. We need the authorization of the Congress to do more, to open this small area up on the Coastal Plain to oil exploration and development. There has been some discussion that in this bill, in the Defense bill, we are opening up in excess of the 2,000 acres we have agreed upon. The language is very clear. It says: 2,000 acres. It does not allow for the Natives to add additional acreage on top of the 2,000. It is a 2,000-acre limitation. There has also been some challenge or some suggestion by the minority leader that somehow with this legislation the judicial review has been changed or altered in some way that would lesson the judicial review. That is absolutely not correct. There have been technical corrections in this legislation that differ from the earlier legislation that was introduced, but the judicial review remains in place. There has been some suggestion that the State of Alaska will sue for a 90-percent share of the revenues rather than the 50-50 share. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter signed by the Attorney General of the State of Alaska that clearly provides that the issue has been settled in terms of the 50-50 split because the issue has been appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The State considers the decision by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to be settled law. So those arguments people will make that we should not move forward with opening ANWR at this point in time are simply not true.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, just approximately 15 minutes.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I wish to acknowledge the comments of my colleague and my friend, the senior Senator from Alaska, giving us some of the historical perspective about some of the process we have seen in the Senate. As we take up the issue of the Defense appropriations bill and as it contains within it the issue of energy exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it is fair to say there has been a hue and cry of ``This can't be done. We can't have this included in it,'' and almost a sense of outrage that such a controversial issue would be inserted in a bill that truly our troops, our national security depends on. We know this is not a new issue in the Senate. This is not a new issue in the Congress. The Alaska delegation has been fighting this issue for just about three decades now. Senator Stevens has indicated that for 25 years he has been working on this issue. My father, who held this office before me, spent the 22 years of his career working to advance ANWR; trying to get our colleagues here in the Senate to understand the issue and to move it through the process, to convince the Congress of the merits of opening the Coastal Plain to environmentally sensitive energy development. We have debated this issue so many times on this floor, I have some of my colleagues saying: Can't we just pass ANWR so we don't have to keep hearing this debate year after year after year? And we have been successful, twice here on the Senate side and numerous times on the House side, where the measure has moved through. We were successful in moving the ANWR provision through the Congress, both Houses, in 1995, only to have President Clinton veto it, and we were successful just several months ago in passing the ANWR measure through on the reconciliation bill. So this is not new debate. This should not come as a surprise that this is a priority, not just for the Alaska Senators, but a priority for the Congress, a priority for this country. Senator Stevens spoke to the issue of national security and how ANWR can assist us in that. When we talk about the ``whys,'' why we should open ANWR to limited exploration and development, what we are talking about with ANWR is not an insignificant quantity of oil. It is not the ``drop in the bucket'' that some people suggest. It is not the ``mere months of supply'' that some people suggest. At predicted prices, at what we are seeing today, we recognize that the expectation out of ANWR is between about 6 billion barrels of oil and 14.65 billion barrels of oil. So the mean figure that we use, a conservative figure, is about 10 billion barrels of oil for this country. This is by far the largest known source of domestic onshore oil in this country today. The estimates lead us to make the statement that we believe that the ANWR field, or oil find, could rival that of Prudhoe Bay, which has been supplying this country with about 20 percent of our domestic needs for about the past 25 years. Now, when we recognize what high oil prices are doing to this country in terms of the health of our economy, in terms of our ability to travel. Face it, the energy costs this country are facing are a burden on hard-working Americans. And what is the expectation? Do we expect the price of oil is going to be dropping? Right now, we are looking at future prices in the area of $60-a-barrel oil. The Energy Information Administration, EIA, 2006 forecast has predicted the price of oil is going to remain between $50 and $55 a barrel for the next couple decades. We have to recognize that everything we can do to bring down that cost of oil through increased production domestically is going to help us. We have always talked about the jobs, the jobs aspect that ANWR will help bring about. It will bring about hundreds of thousands of jobs, not just in my State of Alaska, but all around the country. And as we talk about these issues we must remember the deficit we face as a nation and the balance of payments deficit that we face. This especially is where ANWR development can make a dramatic improvement in reducing our balance of payments deficit. If we are at peak production with ANWR, anticipating 1 million barrels a day, this will reduce our country's balance of payment deficit by just about $20 billion annually. This is significant, folks. This oil is coming from the United States. This is domestic production. Now, the big debate today, of course, is the fact that this provision, the ANWR provision, has been included in the Defense appropriations bill. Is this the perfect place for this? Well, when we started several months back, at the beginning of the year, it was not in this bill. It was in the reconciliation bill. We took criticism, great criticism, at the time for inserting it in that legislation as well. But let's talk about why it makes sense, why it is not illogical to place the ANWR provision in the Department of Defense appropriations bill. My colleague from Alaska made mention that there is a great tie-in between ANWR and our national security and meeting the needs of our military. We have direct benefit through increased domestic oil production because we help our military to strengthen our national security by becoming less reliant on foreign sources. Sufficient reliable energy supplies are vital to our military. That is absolutely the bottom line. Consider that it takes eight times more oil today to meet the needs of the average soldier than it did decades ago during World War II. Our military today consumes on average about 4 percent of the oil we as a nation consume daily about 800,000 barrels per day. This is a reality. This is what we are dealing with. Right now, the military accounts for about 80 percent of all the oil that our Government consumes daily. So when we look at what we can anticipate from ANWR--about a million barrels a day at peak production--that development will help us to fully meet our military's total fuel needs. This fact alone makes ANWR a worthy candidate for inclusion in the Defense appropriations bill. Really what we need to be focused on is what ANWR does for us, how it helps facilitate our energy security and, in turn, our national security. Opening ANWR offers America the best chance for finding a secure supply of oil that helps to reduce our dependence on OPEC, on other nations; and it does this for decades. You all heard that we are 58 percent dependent today as a nation on foreign sources of oil. We are expected to pass the two-thirds mark within about 20 years. When you put that into perspective and you recognize that such a quantity of our energy--more than half of our energy comes from elsewhere--particularly from OPEC or unstable Mideast regimes, that we have a vulnerability. Think back to some of the statements made earlier this year coming out of Venezuela, one of our leading sources of imported oil. Again, this should remind us that we need to do all that we can responsibly do to increase our domestic energy production. Look at the world picture--what is happening with China and India and a host of developing nations and their need for supplies of oil. That makes it all the more important to make sure we are doing what we can at home. So we need to increase our energy independence, but we also need to do it in balance with our environment and diversifying energy supplies. I wish to talk about the environmental perspective for a minute because this is important. We just cannot develop for development's sake without a corresponding obligation to balance our environmental needs and requirements. But this bill containing the ANWR provision actually lets us address the environmental issues that have been raised about ANWR for years. When the reconciliation bill was going through, because of procedural issues--notably the Byrd rule--we were not able to include, for instance, all the environmental safeguards in that that we might have liked. It could plain and simply only open ANWR. But contained within this Defense appropriations bill are the environmental safeguards, the provisions that we have been discussing for decades. It also has provisions that will require the best technology. We are talking about directional drilling to limit the surface disruption. It requires industry to maintain winter exploration drilling schedules, a technique of using ice roads so the wildlife isn't disturbed. The tundra remains protected. It includes the provision that we voted on not too terribly long ago that would limit ANWR oil from export, from going outside this country. There is an export ban that would be in place contained within this legislation. For Alaska Natives, it finally allows them to develop their lands as long as the total disruption doesn't exceed 2,000 acres of the surface of the coastal plain. That is another point that needs to be made. We are not talking about disturbing the surface of the entire 1.5 million acres of Coastal Plain; we are asking for permission to explore and drill in the entire plain, but not to impact more than 2,000 acres in the process. For some in rural areas, that is the size of a small farm. For some in urban centers, this is size of your airports. That is what we are talking about. This bill allows us to place this language in it. There was mention in the Washington Post this morning that somehow or other the language contained in the bill allows for an even greater area to be opened for oil exploration and development. That is not the case. The case is that the 2,000-acre limitation covers both federal and Native and state lands. What it does allow for is for Alaskan Natives who live up there to have the ability to gain their final land selections, but any development from those lands are subject to the 2,000-acre limitation. It is a 2,000-acre limitation in total. We also require the Department of the Interior to consult with the Natives so that their local knowledge is considered to reduce the impact on the environment and their subsistence lifestyles. We have the support of those Natives who live there, work there, and send their children to school there, who want to see good infrastructure in terms of health facilities and schools. They support opening ANWR, but they want to do it in a responsible manner and in consultation, so that they know their voices are heard. We have put language in this bill that speaks directly to those wishes. We have also included a provision that provides for local impact aid for any of the communities that may be subject to oil development impacts. These include the Inupiat of the North Slope, the Gwich'in south of the Brooks Range, and the municipalities and Native Corporation lands that border the Trans-Alaska Pipeline corridor. And we included language that encourages project labor agreement talks and local hire provisions. So we have been able in this legislation to take the concerns of some of our friends and colleagues who have been working with us--our friends from Hawaii wanted to make sure we had Native consultation provisions included. We have been able to add that in this Defense appropriations bill along with the environmental provisions that have been discussed for decades, ensuring that when we move forward with opening ANWR to responsible oil exploration and development, we have all of these provisions in place. This is key to us in the Senate, and it is certainly key to the Alaskans whom I represent, and most certainly to those who live and work on the Coastal Plain. Now, I have to comment very quickly about a remark that was made yesterday by my colleague from Washington. In her argument against opening ANWR, she talked about ``toxic'' spills on the North Slope, and essentially argued that Alaskans are not being responsible somehow with our oil development. That does require a response. Opponents have claimed there have been a high number of spills. But they fail to mention that the companies who operate on Alaska's North Slope have to report spills of most any substance that is more than a gallon in size, whether it is pure water, salt water, oil, or chemicals; whatever it is, it has to be reported if it is over a gallon in size. According to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, there has been an average of 263 spills on the North Slope yearly, seven times less than in the rest of the state yearly. The average oil spill, however, was just 89 gallons--that is about 2 barrels of oil-- and 94 percent of that was totally cleaned up. Most spills are of water used in making ice roads. According to the National Academy of Sciences's 2003 study, if you look at all the spills from 1977 through 1999, 84 percent of all those spills were less than 2 barrels in size. Only 454 barrels of oil per year have been released into the environment, compared to the 378,000 barrels of oil that enter North American waters yearly as a result of urban runoff, the drips we see at filling stations and other spills. That may be less oil than enters the Alaska environment naturally because of the oil seeps that come up from under the ground on the North Slope. I wanted to take a second to correct the record on other point. Senator Stevens spoke in his comments previously about how including ANWR in the Defense appropriations bill not only helps Alaskans in getting the pipeline from a status of half full, or less than half full, to full; but it is also important to point out how adding ANWR to the Defense bill is going to help Americans overall. I have mentioned national security. I have mentioned the jobs. I have mentioned the economic security and the reduction in the overall trade deficit. What we will also be able to do as a result of the ANWR proceeds and the revenues that will come forth is to aid Americans who have been impacted by the disaster on the Gulf Coast. The bill also allocates 5 percent of the revenues to go to fund increases in money for the program that will also help Americans with their energy costs. This is the LIHEAP program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. We know here it is getting cold, and it is going to be a colder winter as we move into January and February. Americans are looking at their home heating bills. They are looking at their utility bills, and they are seeing increases of 30 to 40 percent. We are going to see natural gas increases in our utility bills in excess of that. This is a huge consideration for us as we try to balance our budgets within our own homes. So the ability to share with those who have been impacted by Katrina, helping to provide financing, if you will, for Gulf Coast rebuilding is a key of this bill. Under the Gulf Coast Recovery and Disaster Prevention and Assistance Fund about 25 percent of the total ANWR revenues will go into the fund--80 percent of the bonus and 20 percent of the longer-term royalties from ANWR production will go to the Gulf Coast States to help them recover from the effects of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Also, we are talking about the reduction of the Nation's budget deficit over the life of the field--tens of billions of dollars to reduce the budget deficit will come from the proceeds from ANWR. What is coming from ANWR is not something that only benefits Alaskans, and there have been those who have suggested that. It is not something that benefits only oil companies, and there are some who have mentioned that. The proceeds from ANWR and what we will be able to do in terms of providing for jobs, for energy security, national security, funding programs such as LIHEAP, funding to the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Florida in the restoration fund, are significant; it is important, and it is appropriate that all are included in the legislation before us. I, too, join my colleague, my senior Senator from Alaska, in asking our colleagues to end this debate once and for all, after the 25, 30 years we have been debating, arguing, and talking, and allow America to finally use its own resources to help our economy and protect our security. Mr. President, I have several letters and resolutions I would like printed in the Record. These are a letter from the mayor and city council of the city of Kaktovik, addressed to Members of Congress; a board resolution from the Alaska Federation of Natives in support of opening ANWR; letters of support from unions; from the Chamber of Commerce; from Americans for Tax Reform; from the American Gas Association, as well as the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth. I ask unanimous consent they be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Chafee.) Who yields time? The Senator from Iowa.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I send to the desk for appropriate reference legislation that will clarify that citizens of the former Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands are eligible for coverage and potential compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, EEOICPA, for workers who developed radiogenic cancers and other ailments after working at the Pacific Test Site in the Marshall Islands. An estimated up to 500 Republic of Marshall Islanders and other Micronesian workers may have been employed by the Department of Energy, or its predecessor agency, or Department subcontractors prior to 1986 when the Trusteeship was terminated for all areas except Palau. Both Bikini and Enewetak Atolls were the sites for numerous nuclear and thermonuclear tests. Other atolls, such as Rongelap and Utrik, were affected by fallout from the Bravo hydrogen bomb test in March 1954. Congress, in 2000, approved a compensation program to provide aid and pay medical bills for those who suffered radiation-caused illnesses because of working on the nuclear weapons program. Congress specifically set up a ``Special Exposure Cohort'' to provide compensation to certain workers with radiogenic cancer and other illnesses because it was presumed that their illnesses resulted from workplace exposure to radiation caused by their Government work. Congress, in 2004, amended the act, first approved in the 2001 Military Construction Authorization Act, to speed payments of compensation, including funds for lost wages to workers or their heirs, to those who worked for the Department of Energy and its predecessor agency on nuclear weapons programs. Earlier this year the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held an oversight hearing to review a number of issues raised by the government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands related to the effects of the nuclear testing program. One of the issues was coverage for residents of the then-trust territory who were employed during the testing and subsequent cleanup. During that period, the United States was the administering authority over the area under a United Nations Trusteeship Agreement and exercised all the powers of a sovereign. It seems somewhat incongruous for the Congress to have established a program that applied to U.S. citizens but not to those who lived and worked under U.S. administration. That also seems reasonable, since there is little other reason for the specific inclusion of the Pacific Test Site if the workers were not to be covered. During Senate debate, Senator Bingaman, a conferee on the amendment, submitted a list of DOE facilities intended to be covered by the act--a list which included the Marshall Islands, 146 Cong. Rec. S. 4754-7. While most of the issues raised by the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Marshall Islands during our oversight hearing are now being discussed with various Federal agencies under the auspices of Secretary of the Interior Norton, this is an issue that will require congressional action, given the interpretations from Federal agencies that questioned whether Congress intended the Act to apply extraterritorially. The act, of course, applies to individuals not jurisdictions and the specific mention of the Pacific Test Site and Enewetak would seem to indicate that Congress intended to include workers at the site. Subsequent to the hearing, I had the privilege to meet privately with the President of the Marshall Islands when he visited Washington in early September. We had a good meeting and at the time I offered my assistance in ensuring that the proper agencies or groups would review the issues they had raised. As I indicated, most of these issues are properly now being discussed with representatives of the Marshalls through a multi-agency dialogue headed by Secretary Norton. This issue, however, may be one that is best handled directly through the congressional process. Therefore, when I was asked by the Marshall's Embassy here in Washington if I would introduce a bill to clarify worker eligibility so that the proper congressional committees could review it, I agreed. Given the paperwork, record and radiation dosage requirements for receipt of compensation, it is far from clear how many Marshallese and Micronesian workers will actually qualify for the up to $150,000 in compensation, plus medical benefits and lost wage compensation for ailments caused by radiation stemming from the weapons tests. That is an issue that I hope the congressional committees will consider sympathetically. But it is only just that the program be opened equally to all Department of Energy workers or subcontract workers who labored to produce nuclear weapons to help this Nation's national defense at a critical period of the Cold War. As an Alaskan from a State whose workers have been compensated for injuries they gained resulting from underground weapons testing at Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Chain almost immediately after the ending of weapons testing in the atmosphere over the Marshall Islands, it is impossible not to support aid for the Marshallese. While Congress and the administration continue to weigh additional aid to the Republic of the Marshall Islands, passage of this measure would be a sign of this Nation's continued commitment to aid the islanders who in February 1946 followed the advice of Bikinian leader, King Juda, and agreed to leave the Bikini Atoll so America could use it for weapons testing saying, ``We will go believing that everything is in the hands of God.'' I appreciate the understanding and the patience shown by the Marshall's Government and their citizens as we proceed to review the issues raised concerning the effects of the nuclear testing program, and I hope the introduction of this legislation will be seen as an example of our commitment to see that those issues receive a full and fair review and discussion.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I send to the desk for appropriate reference legislation that will clarify that citizens of the former Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands are eligible for coverage and potential compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, EEOICPA, for workers who developed radiogenic cancers and other ailments after working at the Pacific Test Site in the Marshall Islands. An estimated up to 500 Republic of Marshall Islanders and other Micronesian workers may have been employed by the Department of Energy, or its predecessor agency, or Department subcontractors prior to 1986 when the Trusteeship was terminated for all areas except Palau. Both Bikini and Enewetak Atolls were the sites for numerous nuclear and thermonuclear tests. Other atolls, such as Rongelap and Utrik, were affected by fallout from the Bravo hydrogen bomb test in March 1954. Congress, in 2000, approved a compensation program to provide aid and pay medical bills for those who suffered radiation-caused illnesses because of working on the nuclear weapons program. Congress specifically set up a ``Special Exposure Cohort'' to provide compensation to certain workers with radiogenic cancer and other illnesses because it was presumed that their illnesses resulted from workplace exposure to radiation caused by their Government work. Congress, in 2004, amended the act, first approved in the 2001 Military Construction Authorization Act, to speed payments of compensation, including funds for lost wages to workers or their heirs, to those who worked for the Department of Energy and its predecessor agency on nuclear weapons programs. Earlier this year the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held an oversight hearing to review a number of issues raised by the government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands related to the effects of the nuclear testing program. One of the issues was coverage for residents of the then-trust territory who were employed during the testing and subsequent cleanup. During that period, the United States was the administering authority over the area under a United Nations Trusteeship Agreement and exercised all the powers of a sovereign. It seems somewhat incongruous for the Congress to have established a program that applied to U.S. citizens but not to those who lived and worked under U.S. administration. That also seems reasonable, since there is little other reason for the specific inclusion of the Pacific Test Site if the workers were not to be covered. During Senate debate, Senator Bingaman, a conferee on the amendment, submitted a list of DOE facilities intended to be covered by the act--a list which included the Marshall Islands, 146 Cong. Rec. S. 4754-7. While most of the issues raised by the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Marshall Islands during our oversight hearing are now being discussed with various Federal agencies under the auspices of Secretary of the Interior Norton, this is an issue that will require congressional action, given the interpretations from Federal agencies that questioned whether Congress intended the Act to apply extraterritorially. The act, of course, applies to individuals not jurisdictions and the specific mention of the Pacific Test Site and Enewetak would seem to indicate that Congress intended to include workers at the site. Subsequent to the hearing, I had the privilege to meet privately with the President of the Marshall Islands when he visited Washington in early September. We had a good meeting and at the time I offered my assistance in ensuring that the proper agencies or groups would review the issues they had raised. As I indicated, most of these issues are properly now being discussed with representatives of the Marshalls through a multi-agency dialogue headed by Secretary Norton. This issue, however, may be one that is best handled directly through the congressional process. Therefore, when I was asked by the Marshall's Embassy here in Washington if I would introduce a bill to clarify worker eligibility so that the proper congressional committees could review it, I agreed. Given the paperwork, record and radiation dosage requirements for receipt of compensation, it is far from clear how many Marshallese and Micronesian workers will actually qualify for the up to $150,000 in compensation, plus medical benefits and lost wage compensation for ailments caused by radiation stemming from the weapons tests. That is an issue that I hope the congressional committees will consider sympathetically. But it is only just that the program be opened equally to all Department of Energy workers or subcontract workers who labored to produce nuclear weapons to help this Nation's national defense at a critical period of the Cold War. As an Alaskan from a State whose workers have been compensated for injuries they gained resulting from underground weapons testing at Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Chain almost immediately after the ending of weapons testing in the atmosphere over the Marshall Islands, it is impossible not to support aid for the Marshallese. While Congress and the administration continue to weigh additional aid to the Republic of the Marshall Islands, passage of this measure would be a sign of this Nation's continued commitment to aid the islanders who in February 1946 followed the advice of Bikinian leader, King Juda, and agreed to leave the Bikini Atoll so America could use it for weapons testing saying, ``We will go believing that everything is in the hands of God.'' I appreciate the understanding and the patience shown by the Marshall's Government and their citizens as we proceed to review the issues raised concerning the effects of the nuclear testing program, and I hope the introduction of this legislation will be seen as an example of our commitment to see that those issues receive a full and fair review and discussion.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues this afternoon. I rise today to talk about a bill that I introduced last week that will have a profound effect on the retention of teachers, administrators, and other school staff in remote and rural areas of Alaska. This bill is the Rural Teacher Housing Act of 2005. In rural areas of Alaska, we have school districts that face enormous challenges of recruiting and retaining teachers, administrators, and other school staff. The challenges lie primarily in the lack of housing. In one particular year, in the Lower Kuskokwim School District in western Alaska, they hired one teacher for every six who decided not to accept job offers. Half of those applicants who did not accept a teaching position in that district indicated that their decision was related to the lack of housing. When we talk about lack of housing, it is not they cannot find an apartment that is to their suiting or to their liking, the fact of the matter is there is no housing available. In 2003, I had the opportunity to travel through rural Alaska with then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige. I took him there because I wanted him to see the challenges of educating children in such a remote and rural environment. We went to the village school in Savoonga. We met the principal there. Secretary Paige was overwhelmed when the principal showed him the broom closet in the school, not to show him the school supplies but to let him know that this is where the principal of the school lived, in the broom closet in the school. This was because there was no housing in Savoonga for the teachers. We met the special education teacher at the school, and she brought out the mattress that she sleeps on in her classroom every night. She does not have a home to go to. She does not have a space to call her own. Her classroom is her room, her house, her bed. The other teachers at the school shared housing in a single home. When one thinks about that in terms of what the teachers do, needless to say there is no place for their spouse, so these teachers who are married--the teachers might be married, but the spouse might be living in another part of the State or, in the principal's case, his wife lived out of State. Unfortunately, Savoonga is not an isolated example of the teacher housing situation in rural Alaska. Rural Alaska school districts experience a high rate of teacher turnover due primarily to the lack of housing. Turnover is as high as 30 percent each year in some of the rural areas with housing issues being a major factor. So the question is, How can we expect our kids to receive a quality education when we cannot get good teachers to stay? How can we meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind in such an educational environment? Clearly, the lack of teacher housing in rural Alaska is an issue that must be addressed in order to ensure that children in the rural parts of the State receive the same level of education as their peers in more urban settings. My bill authorizes the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide teacher housing funds to the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, which is the State of Alaska's public housing agency. In turn, the corporation is authorized to provide grant and loan funds to rural school districts in Alaska for teaching housing projects. This legislation will allow the school districts in rural Alaska to address the housing shortage in the following ways: They can construct housing units, purchase housing units, lease housing units, rehabilitate, purchase or lease property on which the units can be constructed. They can repay loans secured for teacher housing projects and conduct other activities normally related to the construction, purchase, and rehabilitation of the teacher housing projects. This also includes transporting construction equipment and materials to and from the communities in which these projects occur, which in the State is a particular concern because most of these communities are accessible only by air or water. Eligible school districts that accept funds under this legislation will be required to provide the housing to teachers, administrators, other school staffs, and members of their households. It is imperative that we address this important issue and allow the disbursement of funds to be handled at the State level. The quality of the education of our rural students is at stake. I thank my colleagues and I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Through the Chair, to the Senator from New Mexico, I have about a 3-minute statement. If I could have the indulgence of doing that before I serve as the Presiding Officer, I would appreciate that from the Senator.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. As all of us know, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in March of 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska. A class action jury trial was held in federal court in Anchorage, AK, in 1994. The plaintiffs included 32,000 fishermen among others whose livelihoods were gravely affected by this disaster. The jury awarded $5 billion in punitive damages to the plaintiff class. The punitive damage award has been on repeated appeal by the Exxon Corporation since 1994. Many of the original plaintiffs, possibly more than 1,000 people, have already died. Once the punitive damage award of the Exxon Valdez litigation is settled, many fishermen will receive payments to reimburse them for fishing income lost due to the environmental consequences of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It is estimated that the eventual settlement may be $6.75 billion or more. Fishermen already are eligible for income averaging of any fishing income. Section 1301 of the Internal Revenue Code allows fishermen to average fishing income over a 3-year period of time. Therefore, I want it to be clear that any commercial fishermen receiving punitive damages under the aforementioned Exxon Valdez oil spill case should be allowed to average their income over a 3-year period.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I engage Mr. Grassley in a colloquy concerning income averaglng to recipients of punitive damages awards in the Exxon Valdez oil spill case, Case Number A89-095-CV (HRH). Specifically, I would like to address how this will affect those who engage in commercial fishing in Alaska as their occupation.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise to introduce a bill that will increase the minimum funding level for low population States for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's HOME Investment Partnerships Program. This program was created when the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing bill was signed into law in 1990. Funds were first appropriated for this program in 1992. HOME program funds are disbursed to State and local governments for the purpose of assisting with the expansion of housing for low-income families. These governmental entities have a great deal of flexibility when using these funds to implement the program's purpose. When this program was created, a minimum funding level of $3 million was created for States that would normally receive a small amount of HOME funds under the allocation formula, which is based on a State's population, among other parameters. Five States--Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, Hawaii, and North Dakota--received this level of funding for this program in fiscal year 2005. Bearing in mind inflation between 1992--when this program was first funded--and 2005, a $3 million allocation in 1992 dollars decreased in value to $2,215,235 in 2005. This is unacceptable. My State is one of the most expensive areas in the country to develop housing, especially when one takes into account the cost to transport building materials to extremely remote areas of my State. This legislation increases the minimum State funding level for the HOME program to $5 million. Based on fiscal year 2005 allocations for this program, eight States received less than $5 million. Those States are: Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. My proposed increase in funding would be offset by an overall decrease in allocations to other States. If a $5 million minimum funding level had been in place in fiscal year 2005, the other 42 States would only have experienced an overall decrease of less than $13 million. Bearing in mind that the amount appropriated in fiscal year 2005 for this program is $1.865 billion, such a decrease in funds seems reasonable considering no changes have been made to the minimum State funding level since the HOME program was first funded in 1992. In addition, the congressionally appointed, bipartisan Millennium Housing Commission recommended increasing the minimum State funding level for the HOME program to $5 million in their May 30, 2002, report to Congress. It is imperative that we address this important issue so that we can address the housing needs of a greater amount of low-income families in low-population States. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise to introduce a bill that will increase the minimum funding level for low population States for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's HOME Investment Partnerships Program. This program was created when the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing bill was signed into law in 1990. Funds were first appropriated for this program in 1992. HOME program funds are disbursed to State and local governments for the purpose of assisting with the expansion of housing for low-income families. These governmental entities have a great deal of flexibility when using these funds to implement the program's purpose. When this program was created, a minimum funding level of $3 million was created for States that would normally receive a small amount of HOME funds under the allocation formula, which is based on a State's population, among other parameters. Five States--Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, Hawaii, and North Dakota--received this level of funding for this program in fiscal year 2005. Bearing in mind inflation between 1992--when this program was first funded--and 2005, a $3 million allocation in 1992 dollars decreased in value to $2,215,235 in 2005. This is unacceptable. My State is one of the most expensive areas in the country to develop housing, especially when one takes into account the cost to transport building materials to extremely remote areas of my State. This legislation increases the minimum State funding level for the HOME program to $5 million. Based on fiscal year 2005 allocations for this program, eight States received less than $5 million. Those States are: Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. My proposed increase in funding would be offset by an overall decrease in allocations to other States. If a $5 million minimum funding level had been in place in fiscal year 2005, the other 42 States would only have experienced an overall decrease of less than $13 million. Bearing in mind that the amount appropriated in fiscal year 2005 for this program is $1.865 billion, such a decrease in funds seems reasonable considering no changes have been made to the minimum State funding level since the HOME program was first funded in 1992. In addition, the congressionally appointed, bipartisan Millennium Housing Commission recommended increasing the minimum State funding level for the HOME program to $5 million in their May 30, 2002, report to Congress. It is imperative that we address this important issue so that we can address the housing needs of a greater amount of low-income families in low-population States. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise to introduce a bill that will have a profound effect on the retention of teachers, administrators, and other school staff in remote and rural areas of Alaska. In rural areas of Alaska, school districts face the challenge of recruiting and retaining teachers, administrators and other school staff due to the lack of housing. In one particular year in the Lower Kuskokwim School District in western Alaska, they hired one teacher for every six who decided not to accept job offers. Half of the applicants who did not accept a teaching position in that district indicated that their decision was related to the lack of housing. In 2003, I traveled through rural Alaska with then-Education Secretary Rod Paige. I wanted him to see the challenges of educating children in such a remote and rural environment. At the village school in Savoonga, the principal slept in a broom closet in the school due to the lack of housing in that village. The special education teacher slept in her classroom, bringing a mattress out each evening to sleep on the floor. The other teachers shared housing in a single home. Needless to say, there is not enough room for the teachers' spouses. Unfortunately, Savoonga is not an isolated example of the teacher housing situation in rural Alaska. Rural Alaskan school districts experience a high rate of teacher turnover due to the lack of housing. Turnover is as high as 30 percent each year in some rural areas with housing issues being a major factor. How can we expect our children to receive a quality education when the good teachers don't stay? How can we meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind in such an educational environment? Clearly, the lack of teacher housing in rural Alaska is an issue that must be addressed in order to ensure that children in rural Alaska receive the same level of education as their peers in more urban settings. My bill authorizes the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide teacher housing funds to the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, which is a State agency. In turn, the corporation is authorized to provide grant and loan funds to rural school districts in Alaska for teacher housing projects. This legislation will allow school districts in rural Alaska to address the housing shortage in the following ways: construct housing units; purchase housing units; lease housing units; rehabilitate housing units; purchase or lease property on which housing units will be constructed, purchased or rehabilitated; repay loans secured for teacher housing projects; and conduct any other activities normally related to the construction, purchase, or rehabilitation of teacher housing projects. Eligible school districts that accept funds under this legislation will be required to provide the housing to teachers, administrators, other school staff, and members of their households. It is imperative that we address this important issue and allow the disbursement of funds to be handled at the State level. The quality of education of our rural students is at stake. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise to introduce a bill that will have a profound effect on the retention of teachers, administrators, and other school staff in remote and rural areas of Alaska. In rural areas of Alaska, school districts face the challenge of recruiting and retaining teachers, administrators and other school staff due to the lack of housing. In one particular year in the Lower Kuskokwim School District in western Alaska, they hired one teacher for every six who decided not to accept job offers. Half of the applicants who did not accept a teaching position in that district indicated that their decision was related to the lack of housing. In 2003, I traveled through rural Alaska with then-Education Secretary Rod Paige. I wanted him to see the challenges of educating children in such a remote and rural environment. At the village school in Savoonga, the principal slept in a broom closet in the school due to the lack of housing in that village. The special education teacher slept in her classroom, bringing a mattress out each evening to sleep on the floor. The other teachers shared housing in a single home. Needless to say, there is not enough room for the teachers' spouses. Unfortunately, Savoonga is not an isolated example of the teacher housing situation in rural Alaska. Rural Alaskan school districts experience a high rate of teacher turnover due to the lack of housing. Turnover is as high as 30 percent each year in some rural areas with housing issues being a major factor. How can we expect our children to receive a quality education when the good teachers don't stay? How can we meet the mandates of No Child Left Behind in such an educational environment? Clearly, the lack of teacher housing in rural Alaska is an issue that must be addressed in order to ensure that children in rural Alaska receive the same level of education as their peers in more urban settings. My bill authorizes the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide teacher housing funds to the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, which is a State agency. In turn, the corporation is authorized to provide grant and loan funds to rural school districts in Alaska for teacher housing projects. This legislation will allow school districts in rural Alaska to address the housing shortage in the following ways: construct housing units; purchase housing units; lease housing units; rehabilitate housing units; purchase or lease property on which housing units will be constructed, purchased or rehabilitated; repay loans secured for teacher housing projects; and conduct any other activities normally related to the construction, purchase, or rehabilitation of teacher housing projects. Eligible school districts that accept funds under this legislation will be required to provide the housing to teachers, administrators, other school staff, and members of their households. It is imperative that we address this important issue and allow the disbursement of funds to be handled at the State level. The quality of education of our rural students is at stake. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I thank my colleague and I, too, thank the Senator from Virginia for allowing us to speak today on the 50th anniversary of the convening of the Alaska Constitutional Convention. Although it has not quite been 50 years since Alaska's statehood, it was half a century ago today that 55 delegates from around the State met to debate what would become the Alaska Constitution. Prior to the Constitutional Convention, the Convention's secretary, Thomas Stewart, traveled around the country for 6 months looking at other States' constitutions and how their provisions may work in Alaska. Later, 55 delegates were elected from every region in Alaska, and on November 8, 1955, the delegates met in Fairbanks at the University of Alaska. As the country was shrouded in the Cold War, Alaska's Territorial Governor Ernest Gruening stood to address the Constitutional Convention, and said: Alaska has a great, great destiny. We are here situated by geography and by history in the farthest north and our farthest west in a unique position to achieve that destiny. We were formerly part of a country which today, under changed government, represents the antithesis of everything that we believe in and of everything we hold dear. We have a geographic juxtaposition to that area. We can see it from our mainland with the naked eye. What a challenge then to create in these far northern latitudes a shining and eternal example of what we want to call the American way of life, to make Alaska not merely a bulwark defense for the whole hemisphere, for the free world, but a spiritual citadel of the American idea. It can only be done by the application to Alaska of basic American principles, the most basic of which is government by consent of the governed. So you have here a thrilling opportunity, and I know you will live up to it. Those were the words of Governor Gruening. Alaska did. The Alaska Constitution was the result of the hard work of the pioneers of the last frontier. Five of those delegates to the constitutional convention are still alive today, as Senator Stevens mentioned. I take a brief moment to recognize the accomplishments of these outstanding Alaskans. First, Victor Fisher was a member of the Alaska Territorial House of Representatives and the Alaska State Senate. Mr. Fisher was born in Germany, with an American father and Russian mother. Mr. Fisher has also worked at the University of Alaska, primarily as the director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research. George Sundborg, Sr., began his life as a newspaper journalist, an editor, a publisher, and owner. After the constitutional convention, Mr. Sundborg continued his service to Alaska as a staff member to the territorial Governor. John B. ``Jack'' Coghill was a representative in the Alaska Territorial House of Representatives. After the convention, Mr. Coghill continued to serve the State as president of the Alaska School Board Association and then as our State's Lieutenant Governor. Mr. Burke Riley served as the Territorial Secretary of Alaska and served two terms in the Alaska Territorial Legislature. As a delegate to the Alaska constitutional convention, Mr. Riley served as the Rules Committee chairman. Mr. Riley also served as a chief of staff to Governor Egan and assisted in setting up the government of the State of Alaska during Governor Egan's extended illness. And Seaborn Buckalew served in the Territorial House. After the convention, Mr. Buckalew was appointed to the superior court where he served many years. He was also an Active National Guard member. The result of the hard work of these delegates was a constitution that the National Municipal League said was ``one of the best if not the best State constitution ever written.'' The Alaska constitutional convention would not have been a success without the assistance of staff and consultants. I mentioned the contribution of Thomas Stewart. There was also that from Katherine Hurley, Dr. George Rogers, and Doris Ann Bartlett. I also thank the two surviving consultants, Dr. Vincent Ostrum and Dr. Earnest Bartley, for their service to Alaska. I was not yet born at the time that Alaska's Constitution was created, but that document continues to serve Alaska's leaders as a roadmap to our State's future. Alaska's constitutional convention didn't just set the wheels in motion toward statehood, it has guided my generation and my children's generation and will be a guide to future generations of Alaskans forward. As Governor Gruening put it, ``a shining and eternal example of what we want to call the American way of life.''

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, this is the Senate's opportunity and the country's opportunity to address our national security, our energy security, and our environmental security. Defeat this amendment.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Thank you, Mr. President. I am pleased to be standing on the floor today about 8 months after the last opportunity that we had to debate the issue of development of a very small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. During that time--during that 8-month intervening time--we have seen the price of a barrel of oil rise to as high as $73--now about $63. The chairman of the Energy Committee indicates that this morning it is about $59. That rise has come because of a number of factors--continuing strong oil demand in China and India and other developing nations. It has come because of the effects of weather. We have seen the consequences of the hurricanes in the gulf. It comes also because the world fundamentally needs more oil. Goldman Sachs, in August, predicted that oil will average $68 again next year. Also, since the last time we debated the subject of ANWR, we passed an Energy bill. In that Energy bill, we addressed not only production, but we addressed conservation. We addressed renewable energy sources, alternative energy sources. But in terms of doing anything significant to directly increase domestic oil and gas production, we didn't do much in that Energy bill. We delayed that action until now. I would like to take some time this morning to talk about why development of the Coastal Plain is not just necessary in light of the current events in the past few months, not just the price of energy but in light of what has happened up north in view of the technological change, the new data that has been developed in the past decade to prove, to establish, that we can develop ANWR oil without harm to the environment and to the wildlife that live there. My colleague from Washington, who has proffered this motion to strike the ANWR provision, has said her amendment is really about national priority. I would suggest that the national priorities which are at stake with ANWR are priorities that relate to energy security, a priority that relates to environmental security, and a priority that relates to National and economic security. These are what the priorities are about and this is what ANWR can do for us as a nation. It can help us with our reliance on foreign sources of oil, it can help us with jobs, it can help us build a stronger economy, and it can help us in terms of meeting our environmental obligation to our land. Let me talk about some of these issues. First, national security. When we talk about the reliance we have as a nation on foreign sources of oil, it is not just talk. The reality is, this hits us, it impacts us in an incredibly significant way. Right now we are about 58 percent dependent on foreign oil. This dependency is expected to pass the two- thirds mark within the next 20 years. It threatens our national security. It threatens our economy. When we see statements coming from Venezuela, for instance, one of our leading sources of imported oil, suggesting maybe they do not need to do business with the United States, and we recognize the competition for oil on the global market, competition from China, from India, we recognize we must do more domestically to meet our needs, to strike this balance between our need and what we are able to supply. Chairman Domenici spoke to the jobs factor, the economic side, as well as what this means to our balance of payments. ANWR oil will help stabilize not only our national energy prices, but it will generate more than $30 billion in Federal revenues within 15 years. We talk about reducing our balance of payments deficit all the time. People need to appreciate one-quarter of this Nation's trade deficit relates to what we pay other countries for our oil. Last year we paid $166 billion to buy oil overseas. We will pay even more than that this year. We have to do something to address that balance of trade issue. The jobs will be created. People associate jobs as drilling and exploration jobs. What they need to keep in mind is, when we have development of this size that we believe we can have on the Coastal Plain, this means jobs all over the country in terms of making the nuts and bolts, the pipes, the hauling, the shipping. This means increased commerce, increased job activity all over the country. We throw around a lot of numbers, but look what it could mean to individual States: To my colleague from Washington, 12,000 jobs in Washington State; 80,000 jobs in California; 48,000 jobs in New York State; Pennsylvania gets 34,000; Florida, 34,000; Arkansas, 5,500. These are jobs associated with the activity that will go on up north. This is one of the reasons we have support across the country for opening ANWR, a small portion of the Coastal Plain, to oil exploration and development. People see the economic opportunity for them even in States that are thousands of miles away. Farmers recognize this will help them with stabilizing what they need to do when they are planting the crops in the spring. Think of those products made from oil. We get so fixated on the transportation sector, but the reality is we derive much from petroleum. There are those that will say if we park every car in this country today, we would not have this incredible dependency on foreign sources of oil, we would not have this dependency. However, I suggest we are a nation that is dependent on petroleum for many things. Transportation is incredibly important, but we have toothpaste, footballs, ink, life jackets, antiseptic, dentures, glue, clothing, food preservatives. So much of what we consume as a nation comes from petroleum products. We should not say, if we conserve a little bit more, we do not need to open ANWR. We need to face, as a nation, that we have a reliance on petroleum. When we talk about the amount of oil available up north, again, we hear numbers floating all around. Some people say it is 6 months' supply; it is an insignificant supply. The fact of the matter is, and this is according to USGS estimates, ANWR's Coastal Plain has a 50-50 chance of containing the second largest oilfield in North America. As was stated before, what we anticipate to get out of ANWR would be the equivalent of the Texas oilfields. To those suggesting Texas is insignificant in terms of its contribution, we would say that is crazy. Another example regarding what we anticipate to get from the reserves up North: the equivalent of what we have been receiving from Saudi Arabia for the past 25 years. Again, these are not insignificant amounts of oil. What we anticipate we would receive from ANWR on a daily basis would have offset the oil we lost when the Gulf of Mexico was hit by the hurricane damage and we had all of the oil shut in. If we are to discount the potential of ANWR, it is as shortsighted a viewpoint or perspective as we could ever have when it comes to our energy sources. This is akin to saying we should not open up Prudhoe Bay because, based on the reserves we know or expect to see there, we think it will only provide this country 3 years' worth of oil. That is what the estimates were. Prudhoe Bay has provided this Nation with up to a quarter of its domestic oil supply for the past 28 years. We want to be given a chance on the Coastal Plain to demonstrate we can do something actively to reduce this country's reliance on foreign sources of oil. Again, back to the national priorities. Care for the environment: We take that very personally in Alaska. I take it very personally. I was born and raised there. I am raising my kids there. I want my grandkids to be raised there. I want them to have the quality of life we as Alaskans enjoy. We take the obligation to not only create jobs and revenues for Alaskans, but we take the obligation to care for our land as one of our highest priorities. This is why it is significant. When Alaskans speak on this, 70 percent of Alaskans support developing ANWR. The residents who live on the Coastal Plain, the people of Kaktovik support opening ANWR because they can see the benefits to them, but they can also see they can have the benefits of jobs and revenues that can help them with their schools and their health clinics, that they can do that in balance with the environment, so their hunting, their subsistence, their whaling, is not sacrificed. We like to talk up North about the gains in technology that have been made over the past 30 years. They are stunning. We are proud to speak of them. Earlier, Senator Domenici spoke to the trip we took up North with several Members and the Secretary of Interior and Secretary of Energy. We went to an exploration pad built up on an ice pad. They make an ice pad, and the ice pad is connected by an ice road. This road is almost a Zamboni-type machine. They roll it out over the very frozen tundra and they create this road of ice. The ice buildup is probably a foot or so thick, maybe higher in certain areas as you approach stream crossings. The exploration pad is a pretty compact unit and very impressive in terms of the size and scope of the equipment used. They have Rollagons with tires that are 15 feet high. They are huge, immense pieces of equipment. They go in, haul in the exploration equipment over the ice roads in the middle of the winter. Keep in mind, the State, in consultation with other agencies at the Federal and local level, make a determination for exploration. You cannot come in and explore at any time. You have to do it during the season that is allowed. They make measurements as to the thickness of the freeze before they will allow any activity to begin construction of the ice roads or any activity on the tundra. This is an example. This is not the exploration unit we went to, this is in the National Petroleum Reserve. It is very similar in size. We have the exploration rig standing taller in this photograph with a few outbuildings that allow those working out there to stay warm, get a little bit to eat. You can see the ice road going out there on the tundra. That is what it looks like in the winter. This rig probably is out there for 2 to 3 weeks. Then they pack up and move it to the next exploration area the company might be looking to. This is what it looks like in the summer. This photograph is the exact same area we saw, Rendezvous 2 well, National Petroleum Reserve. This is exactly what it looks like during the summer. The ice pad has melted. All of the equipment was removed during the winter when the ice roads were there. What is left is this stub of that exploration well. It is tough to tell from this picture because it actually looks pretty tall, but that stub is only about as tall as I am. It might be about 6 feet, a little taller. That is what is left. This is what we do up North. We do it for a couple of reasons. First, because we know it is the right thing to do. We need to make sure we are caring for the environment. Second, we have the toughest, the strictest environmental standards for oil exploration and drilling anywhere in the country, and I would say probably anywhere in the world. We are proud of it. We are proud of the results that come out of this. We can do the exploration. We do it in a safe and sound manner. We try to leave as little footprint as possible. We are doing that because it is the right thing to do, but we are doing it because we are working with the Native people who live up there, who have lived up there for generations, who want to be able to continue to hunt and fish and whale. The caribou are free to room. The central caribou herd near Prudhoe Bay in the 30 years since we have had oil development has grown 10 times. Some say we scare away the caribou and the Native communities will not have the subsistence source. The fact of the matter is, the reality proves otherwise. We are doing what we should be doing when it comes to care for the environment. Polar bears have not been mentioned today, but they might later in debate so I will address them. There are some who are concerned that man's activity there will be driving the polar bear from the Coastal Plain. The fact of the matter is we have very healthy polar bear stocks up North in the Coastal Plain area where we are talking about the potential for ANWR development. We have about 29 identified dens. We use infrared detection to determine where the polar bear are actually denning so we do not go near them. We are taking the steps needed and necessary to care for the animals and the environment. Other things we are doing to recognize we need to work with the environment, with the animals, with those who would live there, include drilling restrictions during the summer months to prevent noise activity. There are prohibitions on any kind of seismic activity when the whales are migrating through. We are using directional drilling so we go into the ground and under the surface, and we are able to drill out 3 or 4 miles in every direction so there is no disturbance to the surface. We are talking about a 2,000-acre limitation. I will go back to the map of the Coastal Plain to again put it in perspective. We are talking about 2,000 acres. That is about the size of an average size ranch in South Dakota, according to what the Senator from South Dakota tells me--2,000 acres in an area. The Coastal Plain on this map is the green area. The Coastal Plain is 1.5 million acres. We are asking to drill and explore in an area the size of 2,000 acres out of 1.5 million. The other colored areas on the map indicate the wilderness area and the Refuge itself. The orange shown on the map is the Refuge. The wilderness area is the yellow part of it. The whole Arctic National Wildlife Refuge itself is an area the size of South Carolina. It is 19.6 million acres. Of that 19.6 million acres, we have 8 million that are dedicated wilderness. We cannot, will not, have no intention of going in and doing anything. That is entirely protected. The balance in the orange is all Refuge. We are not talking about any exploration activity or development in that area. The only area we are looking at exploring is the green area, the 1.5 million acres. And within that we are talking about 2,000 acres. For those of you who live and work in the Washington, DC, area, that is about the size of Dulles Airport. Actually Dulles Airport is a little bit bigger than that. So that kind of helps put in context what we are talking about. Now, the Senator from Washington mentioned this legislation would also open up and allow the natives of Kaktovik to open up and be able to explore on their lands that are contained in the Refuge. The 2,000- acre limitation applies to the natives of Kaktovik, the Arctic Slope. It applies to all lands within the Coastal Plain--all lands within the Coastal Plain. If there is oil that is discovered and explored and produced on native land, that part is part of the 2,000-acre limitation. So we are not expanding this from 2,000, plus whatever might be found on the native land itself. Let me speak a minute to some of the other issues that were raised by some of my colleagues. The point was made there is nothing in this legislation that would prohibit Alaska oil from being exported. In fact, that is the case. But I should remind my colleagues that very little--very little--Alaskan North Slope crude has ever been exported. We do not anticipate that it would be exported, given the demand on the west coast, given the demand in this country. None is regularly exported now, and it has not been exported regularly in the past 6 years. Now, it is true that back in 1995 we had a glut of oil on the American west coast, and Congress did, in fact, vote to permit the export of Alaskan oil. So from 1996 to 1999 there was about 5.5 percent of Alaska production that was being exported over to the Asian countries to relieve that glut. We are now in a different time, a different place. There is no excess oil on the west coast. At this point, even though we are allowed to do so, there is no oil that is being exported. So where is it going? Fifty percent of all of Alaska's gas, coming from Prudhoe Bay, goes to the California refineries. This is near San Francisco and LA. We have 42 percent going to Puget Sound up in Washington State, and 8 percent goes to the State of Hawaii. There is a very fractional amount that stays in Alaska for in-State refinery needs. But what you also need to keep in mind is that it is cheaper for us to ship the oil to the lower 48 than to the Far East. It is a matter of pure logistics. It is 2,056 miles to LA versus 3,401 miles to Yokohama, Japan. So the economics of it suggests that it does not make sense to ship any oil from Alaska overseas at this point. Now, another issue that was raised was the issue of oil spills. This is something that when you hear the debate, these issues raised, you kind of have to take a deep breath and say the statistics on a piece of paper do not tell the whole story, unless you have the facts, the footnote, and the background that goes with it. It has been suggested there have been all of these spills up North, and these spoil the Arctic tundra. But what they do not mention is, the companies that are operating up there have to report every spill--every spill--of any nonnaturally occurring substance. So if there is a spill of saltwater, it has to be reported--anything more than a gallon of oil or chemicals, such as lubricating oils, hydraulic fuels. So when you go up North, you will see in the wintertime--and will in the summertime because the vehicles during the cold winter months are kept running for a good portion of the time--each and every one of the vehicles has what they call a ``diaper'' underneath the transmission to collect any leaking transmission fluid. Because if that were to get on the road, if that would get on the surface, that could be a reportable incident. The vast majority of the spills at Prudhoe Bay have been of saltwater, saltwater used in water flooding to enhance oil recovery. They have not been oil spills. Now, the other thing you do not hear is that the average oil spill was 89 gallons. This is the equivalent of about two barrels of oil, and that of that, those two barrels of oil, 94 percent of that oil was absolutely, totally cleaned up. According to DEC, which is the State Department of Environmental Conservation, 93 percent of all oil spills were of less than 100 gallons in volume, two-thirds were of less than 10 gallons, and less than a quarter barrel of oil. So over the past decade, for the past 10 years, up North, there have only been 11 crude oil spills of more than 1,000 gallons, and 97 percent of that oil was fully recovered. We can talk about the spills and reportable spills, but if you look at a number, it is important to know: A, what was it that was spilled; B, how much; and, C, how the cleanup was handled. Prudhoe Bay is actually one of America's cleanest areas. ANWR development, given the technology we have, we know is going to be even better. Now, I have to address the issue of too little oil to even bother exploring. I mentioned it very briefly at the beginning. The USGS has recently updated its estimates. In fact, it was just within the past week or 10 days or so that USGS released its updated estimates for the amount of economically recoverable oil that will be found in ANWR. What they are now saying is that at the prices we are looking at--they peg it as $55 a barrel--93 percent of all the technically recoverable oil will be economically worth producing. That is up from a previous estimate of 83 percent. It means we have a 50-50 chance the Coastal Plain is going to contain 9.7 billion barrels of oil. Again, this would be the second largest oil field in North America. When we talk about the amount that is available to us, I think it is important to put that in perspective. We are talking about the second largest field in North America. Currently, Prudhoe has been operating and supplying 20 percent of this country's domestic energy needs. It has for 30 years. We want to be able to supplement that with ANWR. There is one other point I do feel is important to address. Several of my colleagues on the other side have suggested that because ANWR is contained in this budget reconciliation package, it is not the appropriate place, and that for a major policy decision such as this, it has not been given the time and the consideration and cannot be in this process. As the senior Senator from Alaska, the occupant of the Chair, knows, this is something that has been debated and discussed for decades. ANWR has been the subject of dozens of bills, literally many dozens of congressional hearings. Legislation to open ANWR passed the Congress in the 1996 Budget Reconciliation Act. It was vetoed by President Clinton. But we have had several bills that have been introduced since then. In the 106th Congress, we had legislation. Six bills were introduced in the 107th Congress. Legislation to open ANWR was approved by the House in the 108th Congress. In the 109th, also, the House introduced legislation. There have been countless tours of the Coastal Plain, where many Members of this body have had the opportunity to go up and see it for themselves. ANWR has probably been one of the most thoroughly researched, debated, and discussed issues pending before the Congress for the past 18 years. I do not think any of us can stand here with a straight face and say that Congress is acting too quickly on this issue. It is something that has been aired very publicly, and over a great deal of time, with a great deal of public input. I would like to conclude my remarks by speaking very briefly about those people who live in the Coastal Plain, the residents of Kaktovik. These are a very hardy people who have lived there for generations and generations, and who want to remain. But they are in a community where energy costs are extremely high. It is very difficult to find any kind of economic activity in the area. They are primarily a subsistence- based village. But they want to make sure, like all the rest of us, their kids get a decent education. They want to make sure they have some access to health care within their community. They want to have certain protections, if you will--whether it be a fire truck to help them when they have a house fire, as they had a couple years ago and had no way to provide for the protection of the property in that home. They view the opening of ANWR as an opportunity for them to be participants. But they are also looking at this from the very critical perspective of being the only Alaskans who live in this area who would be affected by the development. They want a seat at the table. They want to be consulted. They want to be heard. They want to make sure that, in fact, the development that does take place is done in concert with their needs as the residents of this area for generations and their needs as people who live off the land. We are working with the people of Kaktovik. I have introduced stand- alone legislation, along with my colleague from Alaska, and along with my colleagues from Hawaii, that would provide not only for environmental protections to be written into how we develop ANWR, but basically we codify all of those items we have discussed over the years, whether they are the environmental concerns, whether it is the 2,000-acre limitation on development, but also a provision to provide for economic impact aid to the residents of Kaktovik and any other Alaskans who may be impacted, to provide for a method of consultation with the natives of Kaktovik and the region. What we are trying to do through the stand-alone legislation is provide for, I think it is fair to say, safeguards. For all those who may be concerned that, well, this budget reconciliation says ``open up ANWR, the only limitation is a 2,000-acre limitation,'' be aware that what we are providing for in the freestanding legislation, I think, is a very comprehensive set of guidelines for how we move forward positively, as we look to achieve that balance between development and care and concern for our environment up North. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Ms. MURKOWSKI

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleague, the senior Senator from Alaska. He has delivered, obviously, a very passionate statement on behalf of the issue in front of us. But even more than that, he gives us the historical perspective of what we in Alaska have been fighting for since statehood, what we in Alaska have continued to fight for almost 50 years after the fact of statehood, and that is a simple recognition that we are part of the United States and that we deserve to be treated with the same level of respect accorded to all of the other 49 States. We are told not to take this amendment personally, but it is very difficult to stand here as an Alaskan and not take this personally. So I rise with my colleague to speak very strongly in opposition to a measure that is going to isolate us, that is going to pinpoint one State above everybody else to say: You are responsible; it is dollars directed to your State that we will now redirect to the devastation in the gulf area. Alaskans are not hesitant to step up to the plate and help. We do it day in, we do it day out. We want to continue to be able to do that. But when we are singled out as one State, saying, Your project is not worthy; of all the other projects out there we are going to go after yours, it is not the time to be sitting back and saying we can compromise on this, we can make a deal. There has been a great deal of discussion about this bridge. Let us speak first to the bridge in Ketchikan. It has been referred to on this floor as a bridge to nowhere. There have been references to media accounts about the community of Ketchikan and the project they have been working on for years and years. What I am hearing repeated in the Chamber and what I have seen in letters to us as Senate colleagues is a repetition of what we hear in the media, the same tired, worn-out facts that quite honestly aren't true, don't hold water, and yet get repeated. And the inaccuracies and the misrepresentations just make our job that much more difficult. It is as if we are legislating by the media, and we are better than that. It is our obligation to know and understand the facts that are real and to know and understand the implications and the impact of our actions. I wish to talk about a couple of the facts that Members of this body need to know. If, in fact, what we intend to do here, if, in fact, this amendment is intended to provide for reconstruction of the twin-span bridge, it is eligible for emergency repair funds. Negotiations for its repair are already underway between the State of Louisiana and the Federal agency. I am confident that this bridge will be repaired without needless damage to the project from any other State. And if, in fact, there is a funding mechanism that we need to resolve to help make this happen, I am certainly willing to participate in that. I think all of us would be willing to participate. If we need to do something to make this project move forward with the funding mechanism, we can help with that. The second fact, if this is being proposed as an amendment that is going to save money, people need to know that it swaps an earmark for our project in Alaska--the two bridges--to an earmark for a project in Louisiana. The project is going to be completed anyway whether or not this amendment is going to be considered. What we are essentially doing is taking the money from the Alaska project, we are directing it to allow the project, but we are reducing Louisiana's ability to have any kind of spending flexibility at a time when they need it the most. Let us make sure that what we are proposing here is actually going to meet the needs of those in Louisiana. The third fact--this is where we need to get into the discussion about the bridges and what they are because the reference to the bridge in Ketchikan as being a bridge to nowhere is offensive. It is a bridge to the future for the people of Ketchikan, AK. I was born in Ketchikan. I spend a fair amount of time going back and forth between Anchorage and Ketchikan and have done so for years. I was in Ketchikan this past weekend. I wasn't guided by occasional letters to the editor; I was guided by talking to the people in Ketchikan who ask: Where are we on the bridge? They are asking me: Lisa, where are we on the bridge? We put the money in the transportation bill finally, after so many years of waiting, how are we going to move forward on it? They are concerned because they are getting copies of the articles that are in the New York Times and in other publications around the country calling it a bridge to nowhere, and they are saying: Don't these people understand who we are and what we need? That is the problem. Most of you don't understand who we are up there and what we need. We need basic infrastructure. Senator Stevens has spoken to that. If we had a terrible disaster hit us in Alaska, we would not face a lot of the repairs to the infrastructure because we don't have the infrastructure in the first place to repair. The arguments that have been made or the statements that have been made about a bridge that will connect to 50 people do not acknowledge any understanding about Ketchikan and what it is and what kind of a community it is and what it has to respond to. Those of you who have been to Alaska because you have been up on a cruise ship enter through Ketchikan. We call it Alaska's First City. You enter into the Tongass Narrows. As you come in, you see a community that is smashed up literally against a rocky terrain, a long, stretched-out community with islands dotted all around you. People ask: Why do you need this bridge? We need the bridge because on the other side of Ketchikan is the potential for this community to grow and thrive, despite some of the actions of the Federal Government, and the policies that have been made over the years, whether they relate to timber or farm fishing, have practically shut down the community. But we are coming back. We have a thriving maritime industry we are helping to grow and to cultivate. But we have a community of some 13,000 to 14,000 people in Ketchikan. It is 6 blocks deep and 16 miles wide. We can't expand to the south and the east because we are bordered in by the Misty Fjords National Monument on the north, and we are hemmed in by the Behm Canal. The only place that Ketchikan has an opportunity to expand is right across the Tongass Narrows on Gravina Island. Gravina Island has a sloping area. It is wide open. But the best thing that Gravina Island has is some 20,000 acres of private, municipal, and State lands that can make a huge difference in providing economic opportunities for this area. We can't grow in any other direction in Ketchikan. We have to go across the narrows. Right now, across the narrows, we have the airport. This is an airport that doesn't just serve the 13,000 or 14,000 residents of Ketchikan; this airport is the cargo hub for southeastern Alaska. You have FedEx and UPS coming in there. You have all of the aircargo coming into the southeastern part of the State. You also have a small logging operation, one of the few that is hanging on after the policies we have implemented here in Congress. But we have a business that employs 50 to 100 people. Every day, those people are not able to get into their car and drive to work. They take a ferry to work and have to figure out how to do it on the other end. The airport is also incredibly important to our military over there. Every nuclear sub that goes on Pacific patrol is tested for stealth at the Navy facility in Behm Canal. We have technicians coming into the airport. We have our Ketchikan Coast Guard base. It is at this base that they maintain most of the aid to navigation in the State of Alaska. The Forest Service certainly has a very large presence there. Ketchikan's hospital is a regional center. We get many of the patients visiting Ketchikan from the surrounding areas. On top of that, we have a tourist industry where this summer the city of Ketchikan welcomed some 800,000 passengers into that community--800- some-odd thousand passengers that occasionally need to get off those cruise ships. Some of them have medical issues. Some of them need to use our airport. We have an airport that is serviced by a ferry. But that ferry isn't the answer to everything we need. When we have some extreme tides, they can't utilize that ferry. What does that mean if you have a Medivac going out to the airport when you can't get the ambulance over there? You can't get to the other side with the vehicles we need. In fact, we have a ferry service, but is it what we need? Is it what we were promised when the airport was put back there in 1973? The promise at that time was, we will connect you across the very narrow channel of water to the community of Ketchikan. The people of Ketchikan have been waiting for 30 years. Some people are making the assumption that just because we happen to have a chairman on the House side chairing the Transportation Committee, that all of a sudden any great idea, any project that we want as a delegation we were going to be able to snap our fingers and get. This is something that has been in the works for 30 years. Ask the people of Ketchikan how much money, time, and energy they have spent in the various studies, discussing dialog, debating, fighting. It is not something that just came up because we could have it; it is something that we as a community have been working together and pulling together for a long time. Now to have a colleague come in and say that because there is something that has happened in another part of the country and because we need to find ways to pay for it, we are going to make a determination that we are going to pluck this money and we are going to take this project and anything that the community has put into it, anything the State has put into it, is now thrown out the window, that is not it. The local government in Ketchikan has been working on a balanced plan--a use development plan--where we are talking about private homes over there, businesses, industrial facilities, harbors, green spaces to enhance the environmental value. We are trying to plan for our growth and development, but you can't have the growth and you can't have the development if you do not have access. Access is our State's biggest challenge. As Senator Stevens has mentioned, the biggest State in the Union has the smallest number of roads. People look at it and say, It just doesn't make sense in Alaska where you have a limited number of people, and yet we spend so much money on Alaska. It must be wrong, you must be taking too much. The sad fact is, folks, we are a long way from the rest of the country, and it costs more. That is a reality. That is a reality of doing business up there. But because our transportation costs might be more, might be higher, might be greater, does that mean our projects are worth any less, have any less value? There was a statement made by my colleague from Oklahoma. He said it is important to know what the people of Alaska are thinking, and he read a couple of letters to the editor that were published in the Ketchikan Daily News and a couple of letters which were published in the Anchorage Daily News. I do not know about the rest of my Senate colleagues, but I do not make my policy decisions based on a couple of letters to the editor. I will ask at the appropriate time to have printed in the Record a copy of a letter that the Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce has posted on their Web site speaking about Ketchikan's ``bridge to the future,'' refuting many of the allegations that have been out there. I wish to read one quick passage because it kind of sums up the position of the people from Ketchikan. Statements like ``The Bridge to No Where'', and serves only 50 people'' simply are not supported by the facts. The bridge will provide road access to Ketchikan's International Airport which serves approximately 130,000 passengers annually and employs 180 people daily. In August, the shuttle ferry ride required between the airport and Ketchikan serviced 31,000 passengers. In addition to the airport, there is a viable sawmill employing 50-100 people who will not have to take a daily boat ride back and forth to Gravina Island for work. During extreme ocean tide levels, the ferry is incapable of transporting vehicles, including typical safety vehicles such as fire trucks! The Alaska Department of Transportation evaluation indicates over the long run the bridge is cheaper to build and maintain than providing inadequate ferry service. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in the Record.

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, in addition to the airport, we have the sawmill. My point is, at some point in time, those back here who do not know and understand Alaska need to listen to those of us who live in Alaska, who work in Alaska, and who raise our families in Alaska, to know and understand what the priorities are of Alaskans and allow us to address those. That is what we are trying to do with the 12 projects that are the subjects of this amendment. I have been speaking about the Ketchikan project, and I want to stick with this for a few more minutes until I turn to the Knik Arm Crossing. We in Alaska are willing to do our share. I made that statement earlier. The citizens in Ketchikan, when they saw the aftermath in Katrina, didn't sit back and say, Well, we got ours. We are a long way away from the gulf, we don't need to worry about it. Private people have been dipping into their pockets, as they have all across the country, but we had a fundraiser in Ketchikan a couple weeks ago. We had fishermen, businessmen, housewives, teachers, shipfitters, booksellers, doctors, and clerks, raised almost $20,000 out of this little community of about 14,000 people. We are willing to step up. Alaskans are willing to step up. Believe me, this week we have had an opportunity to talk about that as we dealt with the issue of ANWR in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources yesterday. We want to help out. We are prepared to do it. But let us prioritize those projects within the State of Alaska that have the support and that will allow our State to develop as every other State in the Union has been allowed to develop. Ketchikan is asking for nothing more than exactly the same type of bridge connection that other communities all across the country have. However, Ketchikan and most of the other communities in my State are stuck in this time warp, a mid- 1900s time warp, where transportation systems that are old hat or accepted and part of the landscape in the rest of the country are still the future to the State of Alaska. What we are trying to do is to bridge into the future. Now I turn, for a minute, to the Knik Arm Crossing because we have not given as much attention to that. Maybe it is because the media hasn't dubbed it or given it a catchy little name such as ``Bridge to Nowhere.'' As Senator Stevens has indicated, again, we are a victim of our own geography. We are hemmed in by the mountains, the ocean, Cook Inlet, military land, and national forest lands. We don't have any place to grow. This is Alaska's largest community. We need to be able to go across the water so we can have the opportunity, as a community, as a State, and as a regional hub, to further our growth and development. The comment was made on the Point MacKenzie--one side is Anchorage and the other side is Point MacKenzie--we have about 12 residents there; again, making us look like we are just going to build bridges because we have the ability to build bridges and we do not care where we are placing them. People that make statements such as this need to look at the facts. First, look at a map. Look at what we have over there. We have a community, the fastest growing part of the State is up there in the Mat-Su Valley. We have tens of thousands of commuters coming into Anchorage from the Mat-Su Valley every day that could be aided by a bridge across the water. To suggest we have 12 families that we are somehow helping out and connecting defies the facts. It is offensive to me. There has been some suggestion this is a project that we are taking up because we can. People need to understand this is something we have been looking at and studying for a good 30 years. I cannot tell the number of projects--actually, I can tell the number of projects, and I am going to. We have, over the past, probably 10, 20 years, so studied this bridge, so evaluated this bridge, that the people in south central are asking, What's wrong? Why can't we get the bridge moving? We had the Point MacKenzie Area Which Merits Special Attention Plan in 1993; the Point MacKenzie Port Master Plan in 1998; the Regional Port of Anchorage Master Plan in 1999; the Anchorage 2020 Plan in 2001; the Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation Solutions Freight Mobility Study in 2001; the Matanuska Susitna Borough Economic Development Plan in 2002; the Anchorage Metropolitan Area Transportation Solutions Long Range Transportation Plan Amendment in 2002; the Regional Transportation Planning Organization Resolution Supporting the Knik Arm Crossing as a Regional Transportation Priority Project in 2003; the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly Resolution Adopting the Knik Arm Crossing as the Number One Regional Transportation Priority, 2003; and then the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Rail Corridor Study, June 2003. And there have been more updates since then. This is something we have been working on for a long time. To suggest this is pork, this is fluff, this is servicing 12 families or 50 homes, we need to have everyone look at the factories and understand that Alaska will never achieve its full potential as a State unless we have access. Taking away these two projects from the State of Alaska and saying this is what we are going to do to help with the reconstruction efforts in the gulf, to single out one State, we start taking it very personally. If the suggestion were made to our colleagues that everybody gives a little bit, everybody gives a little bit on your transportation projects, that is okay. As one of the 50 States, we can deal with that. We can certainly accept that. But to see we are looking at one State-- first it was one project, now it is two projects--this Senator cannot accept, will not accept a proposal like that. I appreciate the efforts of so many that have been working so hard as we try to find offsets, as we try to do the work necessary to rebuild the gulf region. But we need to recognize, again, we worked on a transportation authorization bill, a 6-year plan. This bill was 6 years in the making. What went into it, went into it with thought and study and the support of those people who would benefit from it. And the people that will benefit from the bridges in Ketchikan and the bridge in south-central are not only the people of Alaska but all of the tourists we serve, all of the military we serve, all of the people that rely on Alaska for your energy needs, for your commerce needs. It is not about providing service and assistance to a few. Let Alaska come into this century when it comes to transportation infrastructure. Don't take from us our ability to grow, as all of the other States in the lower 48 have been allowed to do, having been provided the Federal funding. Don't deny Alaska. I yield the floor.