WASHINGTON — A mob of reporters often rushes forward to catch chairmen before they duck into committee offices after hearings, and one such scrum, thicker than usual, gathered in front of Sen. Ted Stevens on Nov. 16.

It was a chance to ask Stevens a few questions for the first time since voters had given a majority to Democrats in both houses of Congress, which will remove the long-time Alaskan senator’s party from control next year.

“Do you think that drilling in ANWR was dealt a death blow by the elections?” a reporter asked.

“No, well, I think,” Stevens said, then chuckled and grinned. “It’s not a death blow, it’s a question of whether the votes are there. Right now, they’re not there.”

With Democrats in charge, oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which Stevens has promoted for decades, will remain off the agenda for at least the next two years, congressional observers say.

Instead, the new congressional leaders could move in the opposite direction by pushing legislation to designate ANWR’s coastal plain as wilderness. They also may try to ban oil drilling near Teshekpuk Lake on the North Slope west of Prudhoe Bay.

“Nobody got elected in this Congress because they wanted to drill more,” said Anna Aurilio, legislative director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, during a news conference with reporters in mid-November.

The Democratic majority, however, is probably too slim to move an ANWR wilderness bill, just as the Republican majority in recent years proved too slim to open the refuge to drilling.

“The situation has turned on its head. The procedural protections that were available to people that opposed ANWR development are now available to the people that support ANWR development,” said John Katz, director of Gov. Frank Murkowski’s office in Washington, D.C.

Those procedural protections have been very effective for Democrats opposed to drilling. Despite Republican control of the House, Senate and presidency during the past six years, ANWR leasing legislation languished in part because Stevens couldn’t round up the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster by prominent Democratic senators. Stevens often said during those years that Democrats improperly employed that procedural tool.

Katz said he doesn’t expect Stevens’ rhetorical assertion to backfire and make him look hypocritical if he now employs the filibuster. For one, Stevens believes that domestic oil production is a national security issue and that members of Congress should not filibuster on such matters. Stevens, and other senators, likely wouldn’t have the same view of a wilderness bill.

“I can’t speak for the senator, but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Katz said.

In addition, Katz said, Stevens’ distaste for the filibuster may not be shared by other Republican supporters of ANWR drilling, such as Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

Despite a wilderness bill’s dim prospects, Katz said, he believes Alaska could benefit from a “low-level” education campaign on ANWR.

“First, if there is a cataclysm somewhere in the world, we want members of Congress to be educated about the importance of ANWR in the nation’s domestic energy policy,” Katz said. “Second, we want to have a counter poise to any effort by the environmental community to propose statutory wilderness for ANWR.”

The national environmental groups who gathered to speak with reporters earlier this month didn’t highlight ANWR except to note that drilling has been effectively stopped. Some drilling supporters, like California Republican Rep. Richard Pombo, the House Resources Committee chairman, were defeated.

“Richard Pombo pushed to open the ANWR to drilling and to expand oil and gas drilling off the nation’s coastlines,” said Mike Daulton, the National Audubon Society’s conservation policy director. “Richard Pombo is now gone and vanishing with him will be his extreme agenda.”

Daulton did say, however, that his group and others will be working to protect the Teshekpuk Lake area in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

“We are looking forward to work with Sen. (Jeff) Bingaman, who is, of course, incoming chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and has led an effort to spur members of Congress to take an interest in the Teshekpuk Lake area,” Daulton said. “We’re exploring our options with Sen. Bingaman about how they might like to go about that.”

Katz said that’s another reason for Alaska to maintain an “educational effort.” He said he doesn’t think that will require more state money for the pro-drilling group Arctic Power.

“The educational effort doesn’t need to be elaborate or expensive, but we will recommend that it continue both to seize the moment if the moment materializes, and also to be a counterbalance to the efforts to permanently foreclose oil and gas development in ANWR or other parts of the North Slope,” he said.

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said on Nov. 14 he will introduce an ANWR leasing bill next year, as he always does. He acknowledged it likely wouldn’t go far, though.

Young has said he sees hope, not so much in the political change in Washington as in the physical change occurring in the Arctic as the polar ice cap shrinks, an effect environmental groups blame on the burning of oil and use as an indirect argument against ANWR drilling.

It turns out the Arctic polar basin may be a new frontier for oil production, Young told reporters in September.

“I say, tongue in cheek, ... wait ’til I start the rumor that we’re going to drill in the North Pole. I’ll have everybody that believes in Santa Claus and Christmas all upset and they’ll concentrate all their efforts on the North Pole, stopping us from doing that, and I’ll open ANWR,” he said with a laugh.

Washington, D.C., reporter Sam Bishop can be reached via e-mail at sbishop@newsminer.com.