Richard Pombo: “obviously ANWR is a controversial issue and it is something that this House has debated a number of times. This House…”

“obviously ANWR is a controversial issue and it is something that this House has debated a number of times. This House has passed it a number of times. It is somewhat ironic that here, at 2 o'clock in the morning, as Mr. Moran points out, that we are hearing that this deserves to be debated again. And I guess we will debate it again because we have debated it probably half a dozen times since I have been here, probably 20 or 30 times since the creation of ANWR. We have talked about what we can do to harness those resources that exist there. The House has spoken a number of times. It has passed a number of times through the House in a strong bipartisan vote. ANWR today represents the largest potential reserves of new energy resources in this country, and if you look at supply and demand right now we do not have enough oil, enough natural gas in the world to meet what the demand is, and that is why the price keeps going up. And the oil companies do like that. They like the price to continue to go up. And we have Members coming down here tonight who have always voted against every new potential energy source. Everything that we have brought to the floor they are opposed to. They are opposed to ANWR. They are opposed to anything that creates new energy in this country. And yet they are still arguing about the high price of energy. It is a direct result of their votes. It is a direct result of the policies that they have pushed through for years.…”