The historic economic ties that bind Washington and Alaska are still strong and would get even stronger if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is open for oil drilling.

Exploring and developing the sought-after oil fields — a move that environmentalists have fought to block for years — would create new job opportunities for Washington-based maritime workers, construction crews and other support workers.

"What's good for the Alaska economy is good for the Puget Sound economy," said Bob Magee, of Totem Ocean Trailer Express, a Tacoma-based shipping company that expects to add a third vessel to the Alaska route should ANWR eventually open to drilling.

The importance of the Alaska trade to Washington's economy was explored in a 2004 study that was prepared for the Greater Seattle and Tacoma-Pierce County chambers of commerce. The study found that in 2003 Washington shipped more than $3.77 billion worth of cargo to Alaska, and that 46,000 jobs in the Puget Sound region are directly dependent on trade between the two states.

The study cites 1,990 jobs tied to Puget Sound-area oil refineries that generate $144.5 million in annual wages.

There have been no recent studies of the additional economic impact in Puget Sound that would result from opening ANWR.

But a 1996 study by Tacoma economist Bob Chase estimated that more than 8,000 short- and longer-term Washington jobs could be created by ANWR development as it unfolded over a period of years. Those jobs would include 1,700 new manufacturing jobs, 1,600 in construction and 2,800 in the trades, according to Chase.

Maritime and other industry officials contacted yesterday cautioned that manufacturing and some other jobs might not land in the Puget Sound area, as more work today is done overseas or in Alaska.

Magee, of Totem Ocean Trailer Express, says opening ANWR would still have wide-ranging economic impact. Offering the refuge for leasing would reassure the oil industry that Alaska still has long-term potential that justifies continued investment in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, tankers and all other support required to pump and transport oil. And that would keep creating jobs in Alaska and the Puget Sound area, he said.

In an earlier era, the jobs potential of Alaska oil fields helped forge a powerful bipartisan coalition between Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens and Washington Democratic Sen. Henry Jackson. The two men crafted historic legislation to settle Alaska Native claims and launch construction of the pipeline to tap North Slope oil fields.

million-acre coastal plain has emerged in Congress as one of the most polarizing natural-resource issues, raising questions about the direction of the nation's energy policy and how to manage 19 million acres of wild lands that are home to caribou, polar and grizzly bears and dozens of other land and marine mammals. It also is an issue that divides the Washington and Alaska Senate delegations.

That division was on full display yesterday on the Senate floor as Stevens led the charge to open the refuge as the best prospect for a major new oil find. Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell helped lead the Democrats' effort to keep the refuge closed, which failed 51-49.

Stevens, on the Senate floor, noted with nostalgia his earlier relationships with Jackson, and professed his "amazement" that Cantwell would oppose development that would yield such benefits to Washington.

Cantwell and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., say they are big backers of Alaska trade, but that any additional benefits to Washington by opening the refuge are outweighed by the environmental costs of opening the coastal plain to drilling.

Cantwell says she wants Puget Sound to lead the way in developing new energy sources and conservation — not in opening the refuge to oil development.

Seattle would benefit more from a policy that "invests in renewable energy, diversifies our energy sources and puts financial incentives behind conservation," Murray said.

Roger Singer, a Seattle-based representative for the Sierra Club, hailed Washington's senators for their "decisive leadership" in trying to preserve a "national treasure."

But Murray and Cantwell's stance has frustrated the Greater Seattle and Tacoma-Pierce County chambers of commerce, as well as some unions, which for years have backed opening the refuge.

"I have tried many, many times to convey the economic importance of this — the direct Washington benefit," said Shari Gross Teeple, a Tacoma-Pierce County chamber member who also works with Arctic Power, a group lobbying to open the refuge. "I personally have asked them to go up and see it for themselves. But they haven't gone."

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com