Energy Bill Opening Alaska Refuge for Oil Advances : Legislation: Measure is the first comprehensive plan in more than a decade. It is expected to come under heavy attack on the Senate floor.

A Senate committee Thursday approved the first comprehensive national energy legislation in more than a decade after narrowly defeating a Democratic attempt to block oil drilling along Alaska’s last stretch of protected coastline.

The omnibus bill, which also would deregulate the electric utility industry and encourage the development of nuclear power, passed 17 to 3. However, it faces the prospect of a filibuster, if not outright defeat, in the full Senate, where its many controversial provisions are expected to come under sharp attack when the energy debate gets under way on the floor next month.

“This is a bill that has something in it for everyone to hate. We predict it will fail,” said Daniel F. Becker, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club which, along with other environmental groups, strongly opposed the legislation.

After months of fierce lobbying by the White House, industry groups and environmentalists, the conservative committee cast its most contested vote only moments before it approved the final bill. It rejected, 11 to 8, a motion to delete the section calling for oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

Energy Committee Chairman J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) and fellow conservative Sen. Richard C. Shelby (D-Ala.) joined the committee’s nine Republicans in defeating the anti-drilling motion offered by Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.).

However, the committee did approve a ban on drilling off the California coast, voting 15 to 3 to adopt an amendment offered by Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) to codify into law a moratorium on new oil development announced last year by President Bush.

The amendment, which Seymour characterized as the “last piece of the puzzle in protecting California’s coastline,” also would add 87 tracts off Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties to the area currently covered by Bush’s executive order banning new oil-leasing along the outer continental shelf until the year 2000.

But any hopes Seymour may have had of using his amendment on California drilling to shield himself from criticism by environmentalists were quickly shattered when the Sierra Club and other conservation groups took him to task for his vote to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration.

Dismissing the importance of the oil development vote on grounds that the California coast was already protected by a moritorium that Bush was unlikely to lift, the Sierra Club’s Becker accused Seymour of “doing a Neville Chamberlain routine . . . waving this phony (continental shelf) victory to cover his vote to destroy the Arctic.”

“This was Seymour’s first major environmental vote,” Becker continued, “and he sided with big oil against the environment.”

New to the political rough-and-tumble of the energy debate, Seymour shrugged off the criticism.

“Decisions like these are never easy, and you’re always going to find someone who will love you and someone who will hate you whichever way you vote,” he said.

Denying suggestions by environmentalists that he voted with Johnston in return for the chairman’s support on the amendment affecting California, Seymour said he supported drilling in the Arctic refuge because “increasing oil production has to be one component of a national energy strategy, and the voters of Alaska, the governor of Alaska and the state Legislature of Alaska all want to open ANWR up to drilling.”

On the surface, at least, the outcome on the refuge was a victory for Johnston, who has been lobbying for years to allow drilling in the 1.5-million-acre plain, where the Interior Department estimates there is a 1-in-2 chance of finding oil.

But it came on the heels of a more serious defeat that, by Johnston’s own admission, cast grave doubt on the chances for Senate passage of the complex legislation, which represents the first attempt in more than 10 years to craft a comprehensive energy strategy for the nation.

That defeat came when the committee, for the second time in a week, rejected an attempt by Johnston to force auto makers to raise fuel economy standards from the present average of 27.5 miles per gallon to 37 m.p.g. by 2006.

The proposal to raise the corporate average fuel economy standards for cars sought to strike a compromise between conservationists, who wanted a higher standard, and the White House, which wanted none at all.

But, in an illustration of how the complex politics of the energy debate can produce strange, if very temporary, bedfellows, White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu and environmental groups both lobbied hard to defeat the proposal--the White House because of a pledge it reportedly made to auto makers to oppose higher standards and the environmentalists because they feared that Johnston’s strategy of coupling drilling in the Arctic to the fuel economy standard would enhance the bill’s chances in the Senate.

Johnston lobbied hard for days, pressuring, bargaining and, in the end, pleading with senators on the committee floor to accept his fuel economy amendment on the grounds that the bill needed stronger conservation measures to attract more votes and balance what was a production-oriented slant.

The Arctic refuge and fuel economy standards “are opposite poles of the same magnet,” Johnston said. “They have to go together to report a bill to the floor that is balanced. If we’re going to put a successful bill together it’s got to include (corporate average fuel economy standards).”

The committee, however, easily rejected Johnston’s measure, with some members saying the provision was too weak and others arguing that it could threaten the economically ailing U.S. auto industry.

That left the bill with few conservation measures to balance its controversial provisions to increase oil production, ease licensing requirements for nuclear reactors and lift some restrictions on utility companies to encourage more electricity production--an imbalance that did not exactly displease environmentalists who believe the bill is doomed to failure in its present form.