ENVIRONMENT

GAO Report Questions Bush ANWR Position: A centerpiece argument for opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration was criticized in a General Accounting Office report. The Bush Administration estimated that without the crude oil from ANWR, the trans-Alaska oil pipeline would have to close by the year 2009. The GAO report, requested by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), found that the Energy Department’s figures implied “a level of precision that does not exist.” Environmentalists have argued that the pipeline operation would not be threatened so soon because more oil will be available, without opening ANWR, than the Bush Administration estimated.