WASHINGTON -- With the price of oil soaring to a record $56 a barrel, the U.S. Senate yesterday narrowly voted to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, handing a key legislative victory to President Bush and a bitter defeat to environmentalists.

On a vote of 51-49, the Senate for the first time after more than two decades of controversy went on record in favor of exploring a wilderness area that President Dwight Eisenhower first shielded from development in 1960.

"This project will keep our economy growing by creating jobs and ensuring that businesses can expand," Bush said in a statement. "And it will make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy, eventually by up to a million barrels of oil a day."

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who has fought for 24 years to open the arctic refuge to oil companies, acknowledged it still could be "a long process" before a final drilling measure clears Congress. Lawmakers still must agree on a final budget, where the permission to drill in the refuge was attached as a tactical maneuver, something they failed to do last year, or yesterday's vote would have been for naught.

Nevertheless, a Senate with an enhanced Republican majority after last November's elections made clear that it now supports tapping the refuge for oil and gas. Two years ago, a similar attempt to use the budget process to open the refuge failed by three votes.

"We deeply regret that 51 Senators voted to pursue special interests instead of energy solutions," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, who vowed to fight on. "This razor-thin vote is by no means a mandate to drill in the arctic refuge."

Environmentalists for years have fought such development, contending it would lead to a spider web of drilling platforms, pipelines and roads that would damage the habitat for caribou, polar bears and millions of migratory birds that use the refuge's coastal plain.

The Senate vote left intact a provision attached to the 2006 budget resolution that permits exploratory drilling in the refuge. Attaching it to the budget prevented Democrats from using a filibuster to stop it, as they've done in the past. Ending a filibuster requires 60 votes, which drilling advocates have not been able to muster.

Democrats bitterly complained that Republicans abused Senate rules to attach the drilling provision to the budget, saying it should have remained part of the president's energy package and debated at length along with other provisions. Republicans retorted that Democrats had used the same maneuver when they controlled the Senate.

Republicans Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania voted to support drilling in the arctic refuge, as did Ohio Republican George Voinovich. Ohio Republican Mike DeWine and West Virginia Democrats Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller voted against the provision. The vote came after a volley of emotional exchanges, with frustration and anger spilling out on both sides of the aisle.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who led the attack against drilling in the refuge, said the amount of oil to be found there would supply the nation for only six months, would take 10 years to develop, and would do nothing to alleviate today's record high oil prices.

She also argued that Congress should focus on conservation and on developing alternative and renewable forms of energy instead of depleting the nation's last known onshore oil reserves. By simply encouraging proper tire pressure on cars and trucks, she said, the United States could save more oil than the wildlife refuge could produce.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Alaskans overwhelmingly favor developing the refuge's energy potential. She said the area to be explored -- a 1.5 million-acre coastal section of the 19-million acre refuge -- is a "very tiny portion" of Alaska but could provide a million barrels a day. "It's enough to run fuel for Maryland for 100 years. It's enough to replace all of our imports from Saudi Arabia for 25 years."

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., protested the tactic of attaching the drilling provision to the budget resolution, which led Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, to accuse Kerry of impugning his (Stevens') integrity.

The two senators also disagreed over the likely environmental effects of drilling in the refuge. Stevens said modern technology allows drilling to cause little damage to land or wildlife, but Kerry focused on the pristine nature of the refuge and how any industrial operation couldn't help but degrade it.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., insisted that even if peak production proves feasible, the refuge would provide a small fraction of U.S. oil needs. "How in the world can this be the centerpiece of our energy policy?" he demanded.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., cited the Bible's admonition to be caretakers of the environment. "The Earth is the Lord's. We have to protect this for the generations that will follow us. Ninety-five percent of the North Slope in this part of Alaska is open for drilling. This five percent should be preserved as a wildlife refuge."

Republicans countered that with near constant turbulence in the Middle East, where much of the world's proven oil reserves are located, the United States must develop all of its own available sources of oil and gas.

The House budget proposal does not include the drilling provision, but the House has routinely voted in favor of developing the arctic refuge.

Opponents vowed to keep lobbying. Defenders of Wildlife president Rodger Schlickeisen insisted, "This thing isn't over, not by a long shot."