ANWR Oil Development A National Priority

Joe Bell

In early March 2005 the United States Senate voted to open a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration. The action took place when the Senate included a provision in the budget that permits oil lease sales in ANWR. Democrats tried to remove the provision but failed by a 51 to 49 vote.

This is action long overdue and Congress should move to allow the nation to utilize the tremendous natural resource in ANWR that are currently dormant. Two years ago the Senate rejected drilling in ANWR by a vote of 52 to 48. Republicans gained Senate seats in the previous election and that tipped the scales towards rationality.

In 1995 President Bill Clinton vetoed legislation that would have permitted drilling in ANWR. Had America embarked on that process a decade ago we would be in a better energy position today. It is time to move forward.

Numerous reasons have been offered by opponents to drilling in ANWR, none of them reasonable. Some argue that America can continue to import its oil. Global realities make that a reckless approach. America must lessen its dependency on foreign oil and using domestic oil is one way to solve the problem. The nation currently imports about 11 million barrels of oil every day, which is 58 percent of its needs. It is unwise for America to maintain a dependency upon the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which includes nations in the unstable Middle East.

Some counter that argument by pointing out, correctly, that of the top five oil exporters to America, three (Mexico, Canada and Venezuela) are not Middle Eastern nations.

However, volatility is not a condition unique to the Middle East. Recent events indicate America should be wary of depending upon Venezuela for its energy needs. On March 15, 2005, the Washington Post reported that Venezuela President Hugo Chavez is searching for new oil markets and “allies to unite against ‘the imperialist power’” – meaning America.

The Post quoted a former Venezuelan government minister who said one of Chavez’s primary goals is to “do everything he possibly can to negatively affect the United States, Bush in particular.”

The United States buys 60 percent of Venezuela’s oil, so it could be argued that Venezuela needs U.S. dollars. Nevertheless, given the tone of Chavez’s comments and his eagerness to find other customers, America should not permit itself to remain reliant upon that source of energy.

The Post also said, “Another politician with sharp anti-Washington views, Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is the early favorite in next year’s presidential election…”

In addition, there is interconnectedness in regard to oil production and the global market that indicates America should become more energy autonomous. Writing in the July/August 2003 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Kenneth Pollack pointed out that the worldwide economy, which developed over the previous half century, relies on dependable and affordable oil. If that were to be eliminated the global economy would crash.

Roughly 25 percent of the world’s oil production originates from the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia accounts for about 15 percent of that amount.

Pollack wrote, “Saudi Arabia is not only the world’s largest oil producer and the holder of the world’s largest oil reserves, but it also has a majority of the world’s excess production capacity, which the Saudi’s use to stabilize and control the price of oil by increasing or decreasing production as needed. Because of the importance of both Saudi production and Saudi slack capacity, the sudden loss of the Saudi oil network would paralyze the global economy, probably causing a global turndown at least as devastating as the Great Depression of the 1930s, if not worse.”

The case is clearly made that even though America does not import most of its oil from the Persian Gulf, if Saudi oil production vanished the price of oil would rise dramatically and the U.S. economy and much of the world’s would be wrecked. America needs to invest in its own energy sources, both oil and alternative energy, and become as self-reliant as possible as quickly as possible. Exploring ANWR is part of the solution.

ANWR’s coastal plain contains the largest undeveloped oil reserve in the United States, containing between 6 billion and 16 billion barrels of oil according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The U.S. Energy Information Agency calculates ANWR oil and gas production would cut the nation’s dependency on oil imports by 4 percent annually by 2025.

Environmentalists make the case that ANWR should remain a pristine sanctuary and that drilling for oil would disrupt the ecology. That is a myth.

A map of the region shows that ANWR is situated on the northeastern border of Alaska and it encompasses about 19.5 million acres. That is approximately the size of South Carolina. Drilling would require the use of about 2,000 acres, which is roughly the size of Dulles Airport. That is merely one ten-thousandth of ANWR.

Oil drilling has been ongoing in Alaska, at Prudhoe Bay, since the 1970s. The amount of land that has been disturbed is 5,000 acres. Given advances in technology over the decades (improvements in directional and extended reach drilling, for example), if Prudhoe Bay were to be developed today it would require less than 2,000 acres, which represents a 60 percent decrease in land use.

Nevertheless, wildlife has not been harmed by the drilling at Prudhoe Bay. When that oil project was first conceived the Central Arctic caribou herd numbered about 3,000. By 2002, despite the ‘disruption’ caused by oil drilling, the herd numbered 32,000.

Professor Matthew Cronin, from the University of Alaska, has observed that after three decades of drilling at Prudhoe Bay “wildlife populations have not experienced major impacts. Populations of caribou, grizzly bears, arctic foxes, and musk ox have all grown or remained stable over the period of oil exploration and development.”

There is no good reason for the United States not to move forward and develop its ANWR resources. Misinformed concerns over the fate of Arctic wildlife can no longer supercede the genuine urgency to upgrade America’s energy policy.

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Joseph Bell has hosted a radio talk show and is a former editorial writer/columnist for several Connecticut newspapers. A former liberal Democrat, Bell has not been on the conservative side of the aisle for very long. He voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Abandoning the convictions that he had held and defended through adolescence and into adulthood was not easy. Sincere soul-searching and a commitment to distinguish fact from fiction compelled him to accept that liberal ideology was bankrupt.

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