US: In what is being seen as a substantial defeat for the Bush Administration the Senate has voted down proposals to drill for oil in a major Arctic wilderness refuge in Alaska (ANWR).
The vote in the Senate on Thursday afternoon of 54 to 46 against, saw Republicans a full 14 votes short of the 60 votes they would have needed to overcome a filibuster prospect. The measure was seen as a key element in the President's Energy Bill, now devoid of measures to increase domestic production.
The decision spares a 1.9-million-acre roadless refuge the size of Ireland in northeast Alaska, south of the Beaufort Sea, between the Canadian border and the huge oilfields of Prudhoe Bay.
Known as the North's Serengeti, it is home to the great Porcupine caribou herd which migrates annually across the giant Brooks range to calve on its northern slopes, in winter the barren icy home of polar bears, musk ox, and hibernating Arctic foxes, in summer a lush green land which plays host to millions of migrating birds.
It is here that Canada's snow geese come from their nesting grounds 430 miles to the northeast on Banks Island, to feed on the rich cotton grass that will sustain them on their marathon flight to California. One hundred and eighty bird species have been recorded here, and 36 land mammal species. Man's lone footprint today is the 260-strong Eskimo Inupiat village of Kaktovik on the northern coast.
Yet Republicans portrayed ANWR as a barren empty space, brandishing pictures in Congress of a pure white nothingness. They sugared the pill of the Energy Bill with amendments promising oil for Israel and pensions for redundant steel workers. The president spoke repeatedly of ANWR as vital to the US's war on terror, guaranteeing a measure of domestic oil security.
To no avail. And although Alaska's senators pledged to continue the fight, the prospects for reviv- ing drilling are all but ruled out for several years unless they can retake control of the Senate.
The vote was partisan with Democrats seizing the opportunity to have a free go at the Bush Administration on an issue that they believe the public does not regard as akin to the war on terrorism.
The president's spokesman, Mr Ari Fleischer, pledged the latter would continue the fight and attacked the Senate for forsaking "an opportunity to lead America to greater oil independence".