Babbittry on the Big Alaska Oil Giveaway

A year and a half ago, many refused to believe it, although it was clear enough that the Clinton administration was planning on the biggest giveaway of public assets in the last quarter-century. Aware back then of the magnitude of the impending gift to oil companies, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt nervously pledged the most exacting scrutiny, the most anguished period of reflection.

Now the scrutiny is done with and the anguish terminated. It’s a done deal.

At issue is the largest expanse of underveloped land in North America, in the form of the 23.5-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska’s Arctic coast. The reserve was created by President Warren Harding in 1923, to be tapped only in moments of national emergency. Throughout the 75 years since that moment, the oil companies have never ceased to argue that just such an emergency confronted the nation and that they should be allowed to drill into the oil trove, estimated at 20 billion barrels. Through the Depression, World War II and the energy crisis of the early 1970s, the reserve’s former guardian, the U.S. Navy, held firm. The reserve remained intact.

The terrain itself is spectacular in its diversity. Untarnished Arctic tundra provides a home to the 450,000-strong Western Arctic caribou herd. North from the Brooks Range to the Beaufort Sea, the Colville River arcs its way through the reserve, home to the largest population of nesting raptors--peregrine falcons--in North America. The coastal plain itself is etched with hundreds of lakes, habitat for more than 5 million migratory waterfowl.

If any swath of public land deserves to be protected as wilderness, it is surely the reserve, but one of the tragedies of this story is that its stewardship passed in 1980 from the Navy to the Interior Department, with predictable consequences.

Scenting opportunity in 1981, major oil companies--in particular Arco and BP--rushed to James Watt, Ronald Reagan’s first Interior secretary, seeking permission to drill. But before the compliant Watt could sign off on necessary permits, he had to resign, and his successors were unwilling to make the case for opening up the reserve.

Another 10 years elapsed. Then, with the inauguration of Bill Clinton, the oil companies once again pressed their suit. Arco was notably vigorous in its lobbying, urging its case through those notable power brokers on the Democratic side of the fence, Mickey Kantor and Charles Manatt, plus more than $500,000 in campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee. The oil companies’ case was also promoted by the governor of Alaska, Democrat Tony Knowles, who was given the Lincoln Bedroom treatment along with a meeting with Clinton.

The giveaway moved into high gear in 1996, when Clinton overturned the 30-year-old ban on the sale of Alaskan crude oil to any foreign country. In itself this was another long-sought goal of the oil companies. They only won congressional permission for the trans-Alaska pipeline in the 1970s by accepting the ban, designed by Congress to prevent the oil companies turning to foreign markets when U.S. domestic prices were soft.

But no one raised a bleat when the 30-year-old ban was kicked aside, and it wasn’t long before Babbitt announced that he was now opening up the national reserve. Babbitt said he was going to inspect the reserve, lose himself in its vastness and return to oversee the preparation of an environmental impact statement.

The tour duly accomplished, Babbitt has now issued such a statement. In true Babbittspeak, it proclaims that a win-win situation is in the offing, with caribou delightedly nuzzling the pipeline and with salmon and arctic graylings migrating up the Colville, easily avoiding the detritus of oil drilling that has turned Prudhoe from the pristine condition of 1972 to one of the filthiest places on the planet.

The giveaway--worth about $300 billion if the reserve is fully exploited at current prices--is being accomplished amid sepulchral silence in Congress and the press.

The most ironic commentary on the giveaway is coming from Vice President Al Gore. He chose the precise moment when Babbitt was announcing the leasing to expound once again on his worries about global warming. If Gore is to be believed, the climate is getting hotter because of irresponsible use of fossil fuels, including oil, fresh oceans of which are now to be drilled out from Alaska.