The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a 19-million acre landmass in northern Alaska. The Coastal Plain is a 1.5-million acre area on the northern portion of ANWR where there is an enormous amount of oil. There is more petroleum in ANWR than in any other known land oil field in North America.
Why, then, do we not extract the oil from ANWR in order to lessen our dependence on Middle Eastern oil?
Currently, between 55 percent and 65 percent of all oil used in the United States is imported. Most of this from the Middle East. Of course, the best way to decrease this dependence is to use different energy sources. However, these alternate sources of energy, in cars for example, will not be perfected for some ten to 20 years. Therefore, a more short-term solution to decrease our dependence on foreign oil is necessary. ANWR is this solution.
The biggest argument for not drilling ANWR concerns the amount of oil there. Those from the Left will tell you that there is so little oil in ANWR that it would have an insignificant effect on oil prices and dependency. However, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior, there are approximately 10.4 billion barrels of oil in ANWR, 1.4 million barrels of which could be produced daily. This would be more daily oil production than that of any other state in the United States.
Let us do some math to see how long the ANWR oil reserve would last if the oil were used as the only source of oil for the United States (which is actually not possible because of production restrictions). Armed with the knowledge that we consume about 20 million barrels of oil per day we can derive that the ANWR reserves would last approximately 520 days. Yet only 1.4 million barrels can be produced per day; thus, the oil would last 20 years, which provides more than enough time to perfect alternate forms of energy.
Doing some more algebra, seven percent of these 20 million barrels consumed by the U.S. per day could be supplemented by drilling ANWR. This would certainly decrease our dependence on foreign oil, as well as decrease oil prices.
Some other positive impacts of drilling ANWR are as follows. There would be a significant economic impact as companies could invest and get contracts. As seen in the Middle East and various parts of the United States, oil drilling is a multi-billion-dollar business. Opening ANWR to drilling would be like investing billions in the United States economy. These corporations would create approximately half a million jobs, another enormous economic booster.
Many of you must be thinking, "What about the impact on nature and the refuge?"
The Coastal Plain makes up only eight percent of ANWR. The U.S. Department of the Interior estimated that only 12,500 acres would be directly affected by the drilling, making only about one half of a percent of the total refuge effected. So drilling there would leave a massive portion of the ANWR untouched. Also, animal life has been shown to prosper around oil pipelines rather than suffer, contrary to common conceptions.
For example, caribou populations have skyrocketed since other oil sites were drilled in Alaska. In addition, with modern technology, oil drilling sites are significantly smaller that they have been in the past. The footprint of the rigs would be insignificant compared to the vastness of the region.
There is no strong reason not to drill in ANWR. Not only would drilling decrease our dependence on foreign oil, it would decrease gas prices, boost the economy, create thousands of new jobs, and benefit the United States as a whole.