WASHINGTON – With the Senate expected to take up sweeping energy legislation in the coming weeks, Maine’s two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, vowed to fight President Bush on his proposal that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be opened to oil and gas companies.

During a Capitol Hill press briefing with nationally prominent Republican conservationists working for increased environmental protection Thursday, Sen. Collins said preserving ANWR for generations to come was far more important than any oil and gas reserves that could be tapped for commercial development as part of U.S. efforts to gain energy independence.

What’s more important, she said, is to achieve a balance between the development of new energy supplies and the conservation of those that are used.

“Americans have a right to develop our energy resources, but not to waste them,” she said in a prepared statement. “We could do far more to reduce our reliance on foreign oil by increasing the efficiency of our automobiles than by drilling in the Arctic.”

As part of energy legislation approved last summer in the Republican-controlled House, lawmakers approved a measure to allow oil drilling in ANWR. The energy package largely was based on recommendations from Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force with President Bush’s endorsement, which also urged offering new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.

In its proposed federal budget for 2003, the White House identifies leases for oil exploration in ANWR as a potential source of tax revenue, and President Bush has said in the past that he will reject any energy plan that fails to allow development in the refuge.

Touted as “America’s Serengeti,” by environmental groups, ANWR represents 5 percent of Alaska’s northern slope and spans 1.5 million acres – about the size of South Carolina. The coast plain there remains untouched by modern development and is one of the largest sanctuaries for Arctic animals on earth. Traversed by a dozen rivers and framed by jagged mountain peaks, it is the birthing ground for polar bears, grizzlies, Arctic wolves and the continent’s largest caribou herd, now estimated to be 130,000. ANWR also is home to the highly endangered shaggy musk ox, a mammothlike survivor of the last ice age.

But the cold swath of tundra also is thought to contain considerable but unknown amounts of oil and gas reserves, something many Senate Republicans and the White House believe could be extracted without significant harm to the environment. Modern drilling techniques would require only some 2,000 acres for drilling rigs and other equipment – the size of an airport at a large city, supporters claim.

Moreover, advocates for oil and gas companies argue the nation needs all the domestic oil supplies it can find. Last year, the United States imported 59.4 percent of its oil, they note, and cite a 1990 study sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute that drilling in the Arctic Refuge would create move than 700,000 jobs nationwide.

“We have been saying that it is vital that this nation produce more energy in light of our high dependence on imported energy from foreign markets,” longtime drilling advocate Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said this week. “This would be a significant economic stimulus and would dramatically reduce our dependence on imported foreign oil.”

Some opponents to ANWR development view such predictions as overblown and predict a complex web of needed roads and pipelines for oil development would jeopardize the pristine environment still untouched by commercial exploitation.

“It not only doesn’t make sense environmentally and it doesn’t make sense from the energy point of view,” said Elliott Nagin, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He said the U.S. Geological Survey estimates ANWR’s oil reserves to be about what the United States now uses in six months.

Both of Maine’s senators said they believe strengthening federal fuel standards offers a far more efficient approach to energy independence and the two are especially keen on closing what is known as the SUV loophole.

“The fact is, drilling in ANWR is not only contentious, but inefficient as well,” Snowe said Thursday. “The fastest, cheapest, and cleanest step we could take toward reducing our nation’s dependence on foreign oil would be to improve the fuel efficiency of America’s auto fleet – and particularly our biggest gas guzzlers – SUVs and minivans.

Snowe, who as a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation has helped write legislation to boost fuel economy standards by holding light trucks, SUVs and minivans to the same standard – 27.5 miles per gallon – as passenger cars.

Collins is a co-sponsor of the legislation.