Drilling in ANWR makes $ense for $ome

The Bush Administration has once again shown its disdain for due process when it comes to making decisions regarding the public lands you and I own. Because the GOP doesn’t have the votes (60) in the Senate to overcome a filibuster regarding drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), they slipped it into the 2006 budget by a 51-49 vote. The budget only requires a majority vote to pass.

Drilling in ANWR has been a focus of this administration since Bush and VP Dick “my blood runs Halliburton” Cheney took office back in 2000. Sucking oil from the refuge was one of the highlights of Cheney’s Energy Task Force recommendations, recommendations written in a large part by industry representatives.

Sure thar’s oil in them there hills. But how much and what impact would it have on the U.S. becoming energy self-sufficient.

Back in 1998 the U.S. Geological Survey reported that there is between 3.2 and 5.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil beneath the refuge. That figure has mysteriously grown while the modifier “economically” has been removed from “recoverable oil.” The administration now claims between 10 and 16 billion barrels of oil are recoverable. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Give ‘em 16 billion – that’s still just a drop in the bucket compared to what the U.S. consumes. Today the U.S. consumes 6.9 billion barrels of oil a year and by government figures that is expected to increase by 30 percent in the next 20 years.

If you could sponge all the oil from ANWR out in one day and stockpile it, even at this pie-in-the-sky estimate, you would get enough crude to run America — at present consumption — for a little over a year.

But it doesn’t work that way. If exploration started in ANWR today, it would be 10 years before any crude hit the market. And then, at peak production, you would be looking at 1 million barrels a day. That’s 1.9 percent of our current use, even less 10 years from now. It won’t produce a hiccup in gasoline prices.

I hate to point out the obvious, but you can’t base never-ending, ever-increasing consumption on finite resources. Petroleum is not a renewable resource. There’s only so much. Today the U.S is sitting on approximately 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves while consuming 25 percent of the world’s production. Anyone see any problem with the math here?

Petroleum is not the key to energy self-sufficiency. An energy policy that sets its sights on conservation, better energy efficiency and alternatives to crude is a policy for the new millennium, not one mired in the “black gold” paradigm.

And don’t worry your pretty little heads about the environment or the cute critters in ANWR. Cheney addressed those concerns on a “Meet the Press” segment a couple of years back: “The notion that, somehow, developing the resources in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve requires some sort of vast despoiling of the environment up there is just garbage.”

Maybe he’s right. After all, it was Alaskan crude exploration that led to that beautiful blue-black sheen that covered Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez cracked. And what about the other environmentally conscious companies vying to drill in ANWR?

BP Amoco has already (1999) plead guilty to dumping hazardous waste at their Endicott Oil Field near Prudhoe Bay.

Exxon, of Valdez fame, and partner Tosco paid $4.8 million for dumping carcinogens into San Francisco Bay.

In 1992 Chevron plead guilty to 65 violations of the Clean Water Act.

In 2001 a leak from a Phillips Petroleum pipeline in Alaska spilled 92,400 gallons of “produce water” – a combination of dirty saltwater and oil — onto the tundra.

Don’t get me wrong. This administration is all about being “green.” As in lining the pockets of the oil and gas industry that has coincidentally pumped more than $75 million into political coffers since 2000 with 79 percent of it going to the GOP.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at ddihen@earthlink.net)