Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) cast a surprise vote in favor of Rep. Deb Haaland as interior secretary, becoming the only Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to support her.
Millions of acres of Arctic Alaska stand open and available for petroleum exploration, but industry's eyes have been focused for 40 years on the wild, wildlife-rich, 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
