Alaskan oil battle may shift offshore

A few months ago, Ms. Miller notes, the National Academy of Sciences warned that seismic exploration and offshore drilling would displace some whales and, in turn, force traditional Inupiat hunters to travel further afield. Any roads built in the area would also intrude on bear habitats.

Opening the Beaufort Sea to expanded exploration, however, is just part of a broader administration plan, which includes temporarily suspending mandatory federal royalty payments for companies that go looking for new deposits of oil and gas.

While taken as a whole, the 2003 version of energy legislation offers less than the $38 billion in subsidies to the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries offered two years ago, observers say it lays out a more ambitious strategy to ease regulatory restrictions on drilling.

One of the most controversial proposals calls for new efforts to identify and map commercial development potential along coastal regions that are currently off limits to drilling such as California, Florida, Oregon, Washington, and the Eastern seaboard.

"Why would you spend all that money and time assessing what is there unless you were planning to go and get it?" asks Peter Rafle, spokesman for The Wilderness Society.

For the Bush administration and the state of Alaska, oil from the Beaufort Sea and the National Petroleum Reserve west of ANWR have the potential for increasing production of North Slope crude which has tapered off from a peak of 2 million barrels a decade ago to 1 million barrels a day.

While Goll says the odds of stumbling upon another massive "elephant" reservoir of oil like the one at Prudhoe Bay are low, a handful of companies are aggressively seeking a big payday.

Technically, the administration doesn't need congressional action to authorize more intensive energy exploration in the Beaufort. However, it does need lawmaker approval for the package of financial incentives to spur more interest from the private sector.

In addition to suspension of royalties, the energy bill creates a revenue-sharing program which gives native Alaskan villages - some of which have been ambivalent or opposed to oil drilling - an inducement to go along with energy development.

If President Bush rolls back drilling moratoria, some of which were imposed by Ronald Reagan and his own father, it could prove politically perilous, Mr. Rafle says. A recent Gallop poll showed 55 percent of Americans are opposed to drilling in the Arctic wildlife refuge.

Many look upon the administration's energy plan as the first real test of the president's ability to leverage his postwar popularity to offset a domestic issue that might resonate badly at the polls.

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