Barrow, Alaska – Chairman Pete V. Domenici led a congressional delegation to Alaska Friday to discuss oil development in ANWR with Alaskan natives who live on the North Slope and visit existing oil development on state lands and in the National Petroleum Reserve. The delegation flew from Andrews Air Force Base to Barrow, Alaska on a military transport. Immediately after deplaning, the senators and cabinet secretaries went to the Barrow community center to have dinner with North Slope officials and Inupiat leaders. Oliver Leavitt, chairman of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation – the native corporation in the area – recounted for the delegation conditions in the North Slope Borough before oil was discovered here 40 years ago. “We were like a Third World Country up here. We were very poor. There were no jobs,” he told the delegation. Natives heated their homes with driftwood from the Barrier Islands. Water left in glasses was frozen solid by morning because temperatures inside the homes dropped so low at night. The nearest high school was 1,600 miles away. “Oil has brought us so much. Life has gotten so much easier on the North Slope – in the whole state. We are grateful supporters of ANWR.” North Slope Mayor George Ahmaogak recalled the keen disappointment of North Slope residents when President Clinton vetoed the Budget Reconciliation in 1996 that contained language to develop ANWR. “We lobbied so hard to put a Native face behind opening ANWR, he said, recalling villagers’ extensive visits to Washington, D.C. Approximately 7,000 people live in the North Slope Borough, which extends along the northern half of Alaska from the ocean to the Canadian border north of the Brooks Mountain Range. The majority – approximately 4,500 – live in Barrow. The residents of the North Slope Borough are anxious for further oil development to ensure continued improvement in their quality of life. Life on the North Slope is expensive. A tube of toothpaste costs $5, a prefab home the size of double-wide trailer runs $300,000 and bringing heat and lights to small villages across a frozen tundra costs millions of dollars. But the natives are equally adamant about protecting the wildlife and the continued of their subsistence hunting. Ahmaogak, on behalf of his North Slope constituents, has engaged the Department of Interior in a sustained dialogue about oil development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska – a region west of ANWR federally designated for oil development. Many natives consider that area to have more abundant wildlife than ANWR and have worked closely with the federal government to ensure that development does not impact the migration of the bowhead whale. Barrow residents hunt the whale during subsistence hunting seasons. Members of the delegation include Senate Energy & Natural Resources Chairman Pete V. Domenici, Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah; Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky; Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; Sen. John Thune, R-South Dakota, DOI Secretary Gale Norton, DOE Secretary Samuel Bodman and CEQ Director Jim Connaughton.