WASHINGTON, March 16 (Xinhuanet) -- US Senate on Wednesday voted to open oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by rejecting to remove a refuge drilling provision from next year's budget.

    The 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge(ANWR) located in the northern eastern corner of Alaska was set aside forprotection in 1960 by President Eisenhower.

    But in 1980, Congress said that the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain of the ANMR could be opened to oil development if Congress specifically authorizes it.

    For more than two decades, the oil industry has sought to exploit the billions of barrels of oil believed beneath the coastal plain.

    However, environmentalists have fought such development, arguing that a web of pipelines and drilling platforms would harm calving caribou, polar bears and millions of migratory birds that use the coastal plain.

    President Bush has called tapping the reserve's oil a critical part of the country's energy security and a way to reduce America's reliance on imported oil. He has urged Congress repeatedly to allow oil companies to tap the refuge's crude.

    Imports account for more than half of the 20 million barrels ofcrude use daily in the United Staes. The Alaska refuge could supply as much as one million barrels a day at peak production, according to drilling supporters. Enditem