Big oil's Arctic raid

THE OIL industry and its royalty-hungry allies in Alaska are so eager to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that they will resort to every possible legislative spitball to win Congress's approval. First they attached a pro-drilling amendment to the budget reconciliation bill, which cannot be filibustered in the Senate, only to see it rejected by a coalition of Democrats and Republican conservationists in the House.

Now they have included drilling in an appropriations bill for the military, daring opponents of drilling to be seen opposing funds for the nation's men and women in uniform. Senators seeking to protect the wildlife refuge should call their bluff and block the defense-spending bill until it has been stripped of this provision.

Pushing the measure is Senator Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican who recently tried to get $450 million worth of ''bridges to nowhere" for his state. The public yield from the leases sold in the refuge would be split equally between the federal government and Alaska, though there is wording in the provision that would allow the state to sue for a 90 percent share. The state already has a $32 billion permanent fund from oil revenues, a portion of which is doled out each year to every one of Alaska's 600,000 residents.

Senators who block this exploitation of one of the continent's great wilderness areas should not be concerned that their action would in any way cripple the nation's defenses. The House of Representatives has only recessed, not adjourned, and could easily reconvene later this week to give its approval to a revised defense appropriations bill with the drilling provisions removed.

If Stevens's tactic succeeds and the Senate feels it has to approve the defense funding package even with drilling, the oil industry will lay claim to a coastal plain that is home to polar and grizzly bears, caribou, musk oxen, and other rare species. The industry says it will create its infrastructure with minimum harm to the environment. But in 2003, the Government Accountability Office reported that the Fish and Wildlife Service lacked the staff and resources it needs to monitor oil and gas drilling in the wildlife refuges where it is already permitted.

Giving away this pristine piece of the nation's heritage to the oil industry would only embolden it to seek approval to drill in other sensitive areas, such as the rich fishing waters of Georges Bank off the New England coast. That is one more reason that Maine's two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, should be willing to filibuster if necessary to stop the raid on the Arctic coast. The Arctic and Georges Bank might be thousands of miles apart, but both deserve defenders from every corner of the nation to protect them from Big Oil.