All bills are erased from the Clerks books at the end of each Congress and need to be reintroduced to continue being considered, thus Congressman Young’s resubmission.  Congressman Young has been perhaps the strongest proponent of ANWR legislation in the House of Representatives and has successfully passed ANWR legislation over 10 times.  The threat of filibuster in the Senate has most often been the cause of failure of ANWR legislation in Congress.

HR. 49 calls for the opening of the 10-02 Coastal Plain area of ANWR to responsible oil and gas development.  The development footprint of oil facilities  would be limited by the bill to 2000 acres within the 1.5 million acre 10-02 Area.  2000 acres is less than .01% of the total 19.5 million acres of ANWR.  The key to HR.49 though is that all lease sale royalties and oil production tax revenues from development within the 10-02 Area would go towards direct tax credits for development of alternative energies.  This would be a direct, money-in-the pocket, benefit to those promoting, developing and using alternative energies.  It is the first realistic and large scale attempt at forging the bridge between our current hydro-carbon based energy habits and a future non-hydrocarbon based energy source.  The Federal Office of Management and Budget in 2007 estimated that lease sale royalties from the 10-02 Area would exceed $4 billion to the Federal Government, and that tax royalties from production would range between $105.7 billion and $296.8 billion.  Using these figures ANWR development would allow for the largest single investment in alternative energies ever provided by the Federal Government.  To put this in perspective in 2007 Congress voted to spend $18 billion on alternative energies over the next several years; much of this was used to recently bail out the auto industry.  

It is hoped that HR. 49 will garner a partisan group of supporters in the House, marrying the environmentalist lobby with the resource development supporters to create a win-win situation.  HR. 49 stipulates that any ANWR development must use the best and most strict environmentally responsible practices available.  HR. 49 also states that all oil from ANWR must stay within the US and cannot be exported. 
The US Geological Survey estimates that the 10-02 Area of ANWR contains 16-42 billion barrels of “in-place” reserves, making it the single most promising on shore oil deposit in North America.

You can see a video of Congressman Don Young speaking on ANWR on the House floor here.