Skip to main content
Foolish Energy Amendment Defeated In Senate
"Americans want and need real energy solutions that end our dependence on oil. By investing in renewable fuels we can put our economy on solid footing while creating new clean energy jobs."
MORE INFORMATION
Today, Senators Domenici and McConnell attempted to amend a bill on Flood Insurance that would have expanded oil drilling offshore and opened the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to energy extraction.
The amendment was defeated by a vote of 42 to 56. The amendment went to defeat because:
* Drilling the Refuge will do nothing to ease pain at the pump or solve our energy problems. Even at peak production, which could take 20 years, the Arctic Refuge would produce only a small amount of oil while spoiling one of our last untouched wild places.
* Recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration reveals that alternative technologies and reduced consumption have ten times the power to reduce oil imports than drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
* The current 25-year offshore drilling moratorium for has protected the oceans and wildlife from industrialization and pollution by the oil industry while benefiting tourism and conserving our coasts.
* Four times more natural gas is available in areas already open to drilling than in currently-protected waters, and the industry is using only a fraction (18 percent) of what it already has access to. There are 7,740 active leases in the Outer Continental Shelf and only 1,655 in production.
* The amendment continues to rely on dirty fuels like liquid coal, which produce nearly double the global warming pollution per gallon of conventional transportation fuel, and increases the devastating impacts from coal mining.