In other words, it would go a long way toward reducing America's dependence on foreign oil and help solve the increasingly difficult energy problem that now threatens blackouts and skyrocketing prices for oil and natural gas.

Sound as if it's just what the doctor ordered, right? Not according to the radicals of the environmental left and their allies in the U.S. Senate.

"Even if Murkowski succeeds in getting this bill out of his committee – something he's never shown much ability to do in the past – it will die by filibuster on the floor of the Senate," a top staffer for Senate Democrats told United Press International. And the source knew what he was talking about. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has already promised such a filibuster.

Says Murkowski: "It is going to take a team effort to solve this problem. We can't afford to leave our best players on the bench. That means it is necessary to responsibly open certain parts of Alaska's Coastal Plain, our nation's best hope for new domestic exploration."

The Alaska senator says he introduced the measure to help solve the electricity crisis on the West Coast and reduce the nation's overall dependence on foreign oil, which he says poses a danger that makes drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge worthwhile.

But the left is having no truck with the idea of drilling in the ANWR area despite the fact that it could ease the current energy crisis, stop rising costs to American consumers, and help reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

Sixty votes are needed in order to stop a filibuster. Even if Murkowski could muster all 50 Republican senators for a cloture vote, he'd need 10 Democratic senators to break the talkathon – hardly a possibility given the craven subservience of members of that party to the radical environmentalist left.

This is serious business. The oil experts believe the oil that lies under a small part of ANWR could make up for 30 years of oil imports from Saudi Arabia.

True to their colors, the radical environmentalists assail the idea of drilling in ANWR – an area they seem to view as their own private property – by promoting flat-out falsehoods.

According to the Sierra Club, for example, it's hardly worth the effort to drill for oil in ANWR – there's only a mere 150 to 200 days' supply underground. Why bother?

The problem is that is simply not the case. Here's what Murkowski says to rebut this deceptive nonsense:

"The truth is that the latest U.S. Geological Survey estimates are that the entire "1002 Area" contains up to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil. If found, this oil could replace all of our imports from Saudi Arabia for more than 30 years! The reserve could prevent our dependence on foreign oil from getting any worse for decades. Rather than being 56 percent dependent like we are now, it could cut our dependence to around 50 percent, according to the Energy Information Agency."

The radicals also claim that drilling in ANWR would destroy the last pristine wilderness along Alaska's coast, even though they say that 95 percent of the area is already open to oil development.

According to Murkowski, "The truth is that only 14 percent of the whole 1,500-mile Arctic coastal plain in Alaska is open to oil exploration. Estimates are upon discovery a major oil field could be developed using modern technology, affecting only a tiny 2,000-acre sliver of the 1.5-million-acre '1002 Area' of the Arctic coastal plain – one hundredth of a percent of the entire 19-million-acre ANWR area.

"Remember that 8 million acres of the refuge are in permanent wilderness and roughly another 9.5 million acres are classified as normal refuge. Only a part of the Arctic coastal plain – the "1002 Area" – was left open for possible oil and gas development."

The enviroradicals really expose their agenda when they insist that producing more oil would simply cause Americans to buy more of those evil gas-guzzling cars and defeat energy conservation efforts.

The truth, according to the Alaska senator, is that "America needs to be more energy efficient and to develop renewable, alternative fuels. But even with increased energy efficiency and conservation U.S. energy demands are forecast to increase by 19 percent in this decade and by 30 percent by 2020. By then America will be producing just 5.26 million barrels of oil a day if we continue on our current trend – being forced to import 65 percent of our energy needs, according to the non-partisan Energy Information Agency.

"We will be needing to dock 30 giant foreign-flagged supertankers a day – more than 10,000 a year – to import the oil we need. That creates much more environmental risk than developing our own resources."

There's a lot more, of course, but this should give you some idea of what Americans are up against in the fight to cut soaring energy costs and dangerous dependence on foreign oil. For example, Murkowski estimates the number of jobs that passage of his bill would create. For a state-by-state estimate go to

http://www.senate.gov/~murkowski/oil/anwrjobs.html

Our dependence on foreign oil has repeatedly cast the U.S. into the middle of the explosive Middle Eastern political maelstrom. Incredibly, it has put a large part of our oil imports into the loving hands of Saddam Hussein. Here's what Murkowski has to say about that:

"I am concerned because we are increasingly dependent on Iraq for our oil. Currently we import 700,000 barrels per day of oil from Iraq – more than twice the 300,000 barrels we imported in 1998. Recently we lifted sanctions on refinery parts to help Iraq increase its production even more, yet just 10 years ago we fought a war in the Persian Gulf to keep Saddam Hussein from conquering the oil fields of Kuwait and possibly Saudi Arabia.

"That war cost 148 American servicemen their lives, caused 357 Americans to be wounded and 23 to be taken prisoner. American taxpayers since have spent $10 billion to enforce 'no-fly' zones and to keep Hussein 'fenced' in his borders. It's ironic that we are now looking to him for relief from tight energy supplies. I recall the remarks of former Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, who was a pacifist. He said, 'I would vote for opening the Arctic rather than send Americans into battle in an unfriendly nation over oil.' "

As I said, push is now coming to shove. If the American people hope to get out from under the steadily increasing prices for heating oil, gasoline and natural gas, they had better start paying attention to the activities of their senators and representatives in Congress.

As of now, a whole slew of these people are representing a relative handful of well-heeled environmentalist radicals against the interests of their constituents. It's about time their constituents woke up to how they are being had and take their congresscritters to the woodshed.

The Murkowski bill is the place to start. Members of the Senate who play the deadly environmentalist game of energy starvation should be put on notice they will be severely punished when they come up for re-election.

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor and publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee. He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com.

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