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Brad Shannon maintains this blog. He is political editor at The Olympian and can be reached at 360-753-1688 or bshannon@theolympian.com.

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U.S. Sen. Cantwell helps kill latest Arctic drilling plan

Rob Hotakainen | McClatchy's Washington, D.C., bureau • Published February 08, 2012 Modified February 08, 2012

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WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, a longtime opponent of oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildife
Refuge, has helped defeat the latest Republican plan to open up the refuge for new energy exploration.

Cantwell, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, raised objections Tuesday when Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch offered a plan that would have allowed drilling rigs into the refuge and protected waters off the coast of Florida and southern California.

“We all know that gas prices going up are a very big challenge to us and we need to find alternatives to foreign oil," Cantwell said. “But
just drilling more as our strategy to pay for this bill is just not going to get us there… It’s as if we think now that we can go ahead
and open up all of the drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.”

Hatch ended up withdrawing his proposal.

Since entering the Senate in 2001, Cantwell has cosponsored legislation to protect the arctic refuge as a wilderness area. In
2005, she led a filibuster to reverse a plan by Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska to attach a drilling proposal to a bill that paid
for troops fighting in Iraq.

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