In a major victory for President Bush's energy policy, the Senate voted Wednesday to open Alaska's wildlife refuge to oil drilling.

The 51-to-49 Senate vote moves the prospect of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) closer to reality after two decades of debate. It comes as oil and gas prices are approaching new highs.

While Wednesday's vote marked a major defeat for environmentalists, it doesn't mean drill bits will be sinking into the Alaska tundra anytime soon. The measure will still have to be approved by the House, which is far from certain. "There's a lot of moving parts in this thing," says Peter Rafle, communications director of The Wilderness Society. "It's far from over."

The fight over ANWR - which may or may not have a significant amount of oil beneath its surface - is one of the longest-running environmental dramas in recent history.

For years, Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress have been able to fend off oil exploration and development there by threatening a filibuster. But now, GOP leaders in the Senate have succeed in attaching it to the 2006 budget resolution as a potential source of revenue. The move sidestepped a filibuster by Democrats which would require 60 votes. The budget resolution required only a 51-vote majority.

The House is still working on its budget resolution for 2006, and the two legislative chambers will have to reconcile whatever differences remain - including oil exploration in Alaska.

From an environmental standpoint, the debate is over whether advanced "directional" drilling methods would allow for a much smaller "footprint" (drill rigs, roads, etc.) impacting wildlife. Advocates say they can do this with minimum damage to the fragile tundra; activists say it's a sham. Meanwhile, oil companies themselves reportedly have lost interest in the project.

So why are President Bush, the Alaska delegation, and others pushing this controversial proposal? Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney - both former oil men - see it as an important part of the effort to reduce US dependence on foreign oil. Unlike politicians in California and Florida, including the President's brother Gov. Jeb Bush, who resist unsightly oil rigs off their coasts, the Alaska congressional delegation is all for drilling in a remote part of their state. If nothing else, ANWR symbolically focuses the broader debate over natural resource extraction in wild areas around the country.

Without more exploration, even the best estimates of oil in ANWR are educated guesses. The US Geological Survey (USGS) figures the amount of "technically recoverable oil" to be between 5.7 billion barrels (95 percent probability) and 16 billion barrels (5 percent probability) with a mean value of 10.4 billion barrels.

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