Stop latest ANWR raid.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Give the Bush administration and U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, credit for resourcefulness: They've come up with yet another strategy to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

As early as today, the full Senate is expected to vote on a budget resolution that contains clear instructions to the Energy Committee to authorize drilling in the refuge. Federal lawmakers, including Oregon Sens. Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden, should oppose this latest effort to give the oil industry the green light to extract oil from America's most pristine wilderness.

As strategies go, this one's nearly as cynical as last December's move to attach the drilling provision to a must-pass defense spending bill that included spending for Hurricane Katrina relief and avian-flu prepar- edness.

This time, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., has chosen a familiar vehicle: a federal budget bill that cannot be filibustered and can be approved by a simple majority. Republican leaders tried the same tactic last year, but now they've added a new twist.

Instead of calling for cuts to health, entitlement and other programs, the new budget's only reconciliation instructions are to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to save $3 billion, an amount equal to - guess what? - the projected leasing revenues from the refuge.

Oil-obsessed lawmakers are once again repeating their mantra that drilling in the refuge would make America less dependent on oil imports and thus more secure. But the truth is that it would do little to ensure energy security in the long term and is the wrong prescription for America's energy ills.

According to the government's own studies, anywhere between 5.6 billion and 16 billion barrels of oil lurk beneath the refuge's coastal plain. Even if the refuge provided a million barrels a day, a highly opti- mistic scenario, the resulting 0.5 percent annual increase in domestic supply would barely make a dent in this nation's dependence on foreign oil. At best, the refuge would provide less than 12 months' supply of oil for the United States.

In their eagerness to please their friends in the oil industry, supporters of drilling in the refuge are failing to see the big picture: This country needs a comprehensive plan to reduce its destructive dependence on oil. Instead of focusing endlessly on ANWR, lawmakers should be discussing better fuel economy for vehicles and energy conservation throughout the economy, either of which could free up many times the amount of oil that could ever be siphoned from the refuge.

Before voting on the budget bill, senators should read reports from Prudhoe Bay, where crews are crews are battling this week to contain the largest spill in North Slope history. The spill of nearly 270,000 gallons of crude occurred just west of the refuge and serve as a reminder that the administration's talk of "clean drilling" is just that - talk.

Studies by experts ranging from the National Academy of Sciences to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have shown that drilling in the refuge would cause major disruptions to a wilderness that is home to an extraordinary array of wildlife - from porcupine caribou to musk oxen. Congress must not allow the refuge to be invaded by drilling rigs linked by roads, pipelines, machinery and aircraft that would profoundly alter the natural landscape.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has introduced an amendment to strip refuge drilling out of the budget. By supporting that amendment, Smith and Wyden would make a powerful statement that they are unwilling to sacrifice one of the last wild places in America to a short-sighted, futile effort to feed this nation's raging petro addiction - and to compensate for the appalling failure of Congress to develop a visionary energy policy.