A last-ditch bid to keep Big Oil out of Arctic Wildlife Refuge
Democrats in the House and U.S. Senate are launching an 11th hour effort to spare the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, America's greatest wilderness, from a hurry-up Trump Administrations bid to sell oil and gas leases.
A back-door provision in Congress' 2017 tax cut opened the coastal plain of the 19-million acre Refuge to oil drilling.
Oil development would take place in what is the calving ground for 100,000-plus animals of the Porcupine Caribou herd. It is a land of prey -- the caribou -- and such predators as wolves and barren ground grizzly bears. Offshore ice flows in the Beaufort Sea are prime polar bear habitat.
Along with five other Senate Democrats, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., will introduce legislation on Wednesday that would designate the coastal plain a wilderness are off-limits to haul roads, pipelines and drilling platforms.
The cause is dear to Cantwell, who has trekked and rafted in the Refuge. She tried to block the tax bill from green-lighting oil development, but lost in a 52-47 Senate vote.
The Democratic-controlled House will vote this week on a bill called the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act, which would repeal the tax bill provision opening the Refuge to drillers.
The action in Congress comes as the Trump Administration seeks to rush completion of a draft environmental impact statement. The administration seeks to hold a lease sale in 2020, before the presidential election.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-last-ditch-bid-to-keep-big-oil-out-of-arctic-wildlife-refuge/ar-AAH5Mfv