The Senate tomorrow will likely vote on an amendment to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and to vastly expand access to domestic oil and gas resources. But unlike similar votes last week, senators this time will vote on a much broader package that includes the extension of expiring tax incentives.

The amendment from Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) is being offered as a GOP alternative to an amendment by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) that would extend more than a dozen energy tax benefits, including the production credit for wind and solar power that her party failed to attach to last month's payroll tax cut deal.

The modified Roberts amendment would approve the Keystone pipeline and require oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in protected portions of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It also would retroactively extend a much smaller group of tax credits but not affect the production tax credit or a Treasury Department renewable energy grant program.

It is among dozens of amendments Republicans and Democrats agreed to vote on as part of the Senate's $109 billion, two-year highway authorization bill, which could pass as early as midweek (Greenwire, March 8).

Sources who support and oppose Arctic drilling said they first became aware of the ANWR and other drilling language this morning.

The Roberts amendment, which will need 60 votes to pass, aims to provide tax relief for families and small businesses while addressing the growing costs of energy, the senator said in a floor speech last week.

"With spiking gas prices hammering families and businesses, this is precisely the time to have policy that will increase energy supply," Roberts said. "To begin addressing the oil supply issues, my amendment would cut red tape and open up more federal land for oil and gas exploration and drilling."

Language in the 78-page amendment appears to mirror Republican legislation passed by the House last month that would require the Interior Department lease the most oil- and natural gas-rich areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, open at least 200,000 acres of the Arctic refuge to drilling and resurrect a scrapped George W. Bush administration plan to promote oil shale research in the Rocky Mountain West (E&E Daily, Feb. 17).

Judging by its length and prior votes on similar energy provisions last week, the amendment is considered unlikely to pass, said Adrian Herrera of Arctic Power, which lobbies for the state of Alaska in favor of developing the refuge.

"The problem is it's got a lot of big ticket items that many people will find something of fault with," Herrera said. While he supports the amendment, Herrera said it appears to be a "Hail Mary" move that some will view as a Republican messaging vote.

The vote, which could occur tomorrow, follows months of Republican criticism that the Democrat-controlled Senate has failed to take up a slew of House-passed energy bills that proponents say would boost the nation's economic recovery.

But environmentalists this morning blasted the bill for allowing development in the Arctic refuge, a wildlife-rich area of northeast Alaska that has been off limits to development for decades. Congress in the early 1980s designated a 1.5-million-acre portion of the refuge's coastal plain to be studied for potential oil development.

"The Arctic refuge's coastal plain has remained off limits to drilling, because the American people want it that way," said Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaskan Wilderness League, in a statement this morning. "Adding a poison pill like this to a bill that is vital for our nation's infrastructure and transportation needs just shows that certain members of Congress are more interested in checking items of big oil's wish list than acting in the public interest."

The amendment would mark the first time the Senate has voted on developing ANWR in about four years. The last stand-alone vote on ANWR occurred in 2005, AWL said.

The Senate last week handily defeated an amendment by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) that would reinstate a scrapped Bush plan to drill in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's Bristol Bay (E&ENews PM, March 8). In that vote, some moderate Democrats said they opposed the measure because it lacks revenue-sharing for coastal states.