Alaska oil plan faces defeat

President George Bush's opponents appear to be on the brink of killing his plans to drill for oil and gas in an environmentally sensitive area of Alaska.

A Senate debate on the government's energy bill is likely to last until next week, but Democratic leaders have promised to block any vote on drilling in the wildlife area.

Republicans have a majority on the question, but are far short of the 60 votes they would need to force through the legislation against opponents willing to filibuster. Some Republicans from the green-thinking New England states also oppose the plan.

There is still a chance that the White House may attempt some sort of political coup - there were reports last weekend that it might offer to halve the area affected. However, one of this administration's strange characteristics has been its inability to fight hard enough in Congress to force through its cherished ideas.

Barring dramatic developments, the likelihood is that the drilling proposal will quietly vanish into the pending tray, unlikely to emerge in this presidential term unless the Republicans make sweeping gains in the Senate elections in November, or Mr Bush starts working far harder to erase the perception that he cares nothing for the environment.

The Alaskan issue is only part of a complex dispute about the direction of American energy policy. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has already passed a bill that includes a provision to allow oil and gas companies to drill in 1.5m acres of the arctic national wildlife refuge, a pristine strip along Alaska's northern coast. A Senate amendment from the Democrats excludes the drilling provision and is generally more concerned with conserving energy - not a preoccupation of the Bush White House.

But even this does little to enthuse environmental activists. It sets a target of using renewable energy to generate 10% of US needs by 2020. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter set a target of 20% by 2000. It is currently 5%.

Mr Carter, who called the Alaskan refuge "America's Serengeti", has written to every senator urging them to oppose the drilling. Meanwhile, Mr Bush's interior secretary, Gale Norton, has been trying to convince the country rather than Capitol Hill, and spent Tuesday telling farmers in Arkansas that the refuge was not worth bothering about.

"I have been there in the dead of winter at minus 75 degrees. It is not beautiful. There are no mountains like they show in the television commercials. It is a plain," she said.

The whole issue has been characterised by this kind of non-meeting of minds.

The most enthusiastic proponents of the scheme are the Alaskans themselves, hardly any of whom live near the refuge and who could all expect substantial royalties. Frank Murkowski, who is leading the Republican fight on the Senate floor, is running for governor this year and the potential jobs and profits from drilling in the wildlife area are a central part of his campaign.