Confronted with an energy shortage, Congress debates opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. Senator Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) argues that “oil extracted from the wildlife refuge wouldn’t reach refineries for seven to ten years.” Senator Jeff Bingaman (D., N.M.) is more pessimistic, saying “drilling in ANWR wouldn’t get us any oil for at least ten years.” Leading the successful filibuster of the provision, Senator John Kerry (D., Mass.) echoes Bingaman, saying, “If we opened ANWR today it wouldn’t produce any oil for at least ten years.”
This exchange happened in 2001, when President Bush proposed opening ANWR to drilling in his energy plan. But one need only change some of the details to update the story for today.
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Last Wednesday, with gas prices over $4 a gallon, even before an expected summer spike, the House passed another provision to open ANWR for development, reopening the debate. A decade later, the arguments, and many of the actors, are the same. To wit, during a hearing in early February, Senator Cantwell, two months shy of the ten-year anniversary of her initial pronouncement, warned that oil from ANWR “would only decrease the price of gasoline three to five cents, and it wouldn’t even do that until 2030.”
ANWR’s fate has been debated in Congress since the late 1970s. Representative Don Young (R., Alaska) recounts that he’s helped pass provisions in the House to open ANWR a dozen times in his career. Had those provisions been successful, say, when the Exxon Valdez spill scared people away from the issue in the late 1980s, or when President Clinton vetoed the proposal in 1996, or when Senator Kerry filibustered it in the Senate in 2001, we would already have that oil on the market. The estimate that ANWR won’t provide oil for ten years is as much a reason for urgency as it is for postponement. In ten years, we’ll want that oil as much as we do now.
The ten-year estimation is also inflated. To listen to ANWR critics, it seems as if the very forces of nature have conspired to burrow oil so deep into Alaska’s arctic core that we would need a decade just to find and extract it. In reality, it could take less than five years to physically prepare for drilling. Given a year for the Environmental Impact Survey, between a year and 18 months for the Department of the Interior to lease out the land, and two years for test drilling and analysis (expedited by the fact that there’s already a test well in the area), ANWR oil wells could be operational by 2017. However, as John Basil Utley reported in Reason, there are eleven “litigation choke points” which could halt the process. It’s only after accounting for five years of legal and bureaucratic interruptions, then, that analysts conclude that drilling in ANWR is ten years away.
Even if oil from ANWR wouldn’t hit the market for a decade, other benefits would accrue during that period. One of the stated reasons for the GOP’s inclusion of ANWR in this year’s highway bill is that the site’s leasing fees would help pay for infrastructure projects. To that end, the CBO predicts $2.5 billion of net federal revenue from ANWR over the next decade. Republicans argue that the figure will be even higher. The preparations for drilling would also create thousands of jobs, though estimates range wildly, from 65,000 to 770,000. Many of these jobs would have to be filled before drilling starts, in order to build the 75-mile pipeline spur required to transport the oil to port.
In short, the argument that oil from ANWR won’t help for another decade shouldn’t turn anyone off of drilling. Prohibiting all oil drilling in ANWR has brought us nothing except endless arguments about drilling in ANWR.
— Nash Keune is a Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellow at the Franklin Center.
I'm near Los Angeles and I paid $4.23 per gallon last night to fill up my truck ... and so I'm wondering why this excellent article isn't lit up with comments. Where's the anger over this and Keystone? Don't conservatives get the connection between the economy and energy?
Good question, Carlos. Actually, I think there's plenty of anger among conservatives - the problem is that the Republican presidential candidates are too busy trying to attack each other to attack the Democrats over this, or to be fomenting as much righteous anger among the electorate as possible. This is an important issue, and it should be used to maximum advantage by Republicans everywhere.
Totally for opening the ANWR to drilling but somewhat repulsed by including this in an infrastructure bill. The only infrastructure projects that should be paid from leasing fees should be those necessary to build roads and purchase pipeline right-of-ways in ANWR itself.
Is it not a natural resource owned by the public? Then why not let the public decide what to do with the profits? Why not nationalize the oil industry and use the profits to eliminate the income tax? Why not use the profits to modernize our infrastructure? When you say repulsed - you are probably associating infrastructure projects with Obama's failed stimulus ... so I can see where you're coming from.
Your point about nationalizing ANWR is interesting fro another perspective. One could be lead to believe that pumping a lot of oil out of ANWR would lower U.S, fuel prices since the oil is coming out of the U.S.
However, since oil is a global market, world prices would set our own price for the crude oil coming out of ANWR. Even if the output could provide a substantial increase in comparison to current world output, other producers would quite likely decrease production to keep prices per barrel up.
At best price increase could be kept in check. And there would be the strategic value, if things really hit the fan in the mideast, there might need to be nationalization of that oil to fuel our military.
But ANWR is not going to drive down prices in normal times, unless it was nationalized, and I doubt anyone wants that.
First off, even if other producers were able to cut their production substantially, increasing US production would still be a good thing for two reasons. They money stays in the US. The money isn't going to fund OPEC.
Regardless, the OPEC producers do not have significant ability to cut back production. They have substantial domestic needs for that money. If US production increases caused global prices to drop significantly, many of them would have to ramp up production in an effort to keep cash flow from dropping too much.
Let's not forget that there are many other producers out there who are working over time to increase their production as well. Brazil is opening up a huge field offshore. Cuba is allowing countries to explore in their waters. Mexico has had had big finds in recent years. There have been other big finds in Asian waters as well.
"Why not nationalize the oil industry and use the profits to eliminate the income tax?"
Disregarding how badly run most state oil entities are, see Mexico, there is not nearly enough profits from oil companies to make much of a difference, and certainly no where near what is needed to 'eliminate the income tax'.
If the world were rational, I would agree with you. We've been trying to get ANWR opened for 30 years now. The Democrats have pulled every trick in the book to keep it from happening. If including the opening in an infrastructure bill is what it takes to get ANWR opened, finally, then I'm all for it.
Only a political party, the Dems, in the grips of extremists would not allow drilling in Alaska. It's so foolish.
Alaska is 4 times as large as California. It's HUGE. It's land area would occupy the entire West and Mid-Western portion of the United States, a dozen states at least.
There are 33 Million people who live in California. Guess how many million people live in Alaska? ZERO. About 900,000 people live there. So in comparison to California, Alaska is huge, vast, and empty.
And we can't drill there? Why? For the critters who are distrurbed for a couple of months, and then quickly get back to their old routines. To save the rocky, barren, plains?
Someone save the U.S. Titanic, whose secular leaders believe their subjects exist solely to serve "Mother Earth."
The premise that we have an energy shortage is laughable. Domestic oil demand is down more than 5% over the past two years. Natural gas producers are shutting down some production because supply exceeds demand so much it has driven prices too low. And, even pessimistic estimates of our domestic natural gas supplies suggest we have enough to power our nation for more than a century.
Gasoline prices are up because oil is a global commodity, and China and India are sucking us dry. And, because our foreign policy, in regard to the Middle East, is a flop, causing speculators to bet the farm that Mid East oil will be tied up in conflicts over the next decade.
There are millions of acres both on public lands and under the oceans that have been leased, but have yet to be tapped by oil companies. The only reason they are hell bent on gaining more leases is to pad their balance sheets (reserves).
95% of the Alaskan Arctic Coastline is available for drilling. Can't we, as a great nation, preserve just 5% for future generations?
There are millions of acres both on public lands and under the oceans that have been leased, but have yet to be tapped by oil companies.
It's about time this oft-repeated lie was given the lethal injection it so richly deserves.
A lot of those supposedly "idle" leases spend years waiting on environmental and other permitting reviews or lawsuits. So just because you bought the lease doesn't mean the government is going to let you drill for oil. Shell Oil, for example, is out $4 billion (yes, that's billion) because the EPA won't let them drill for oil on one of the most remote areas on the entire planet: External Link
The thing is, facts don't matter to the drill-anywhere-except-on-this-planet people, because they quite simply hate humanity. No matter what proposal you have to provide energy - the energy we need to make our lives simply bearable, never mind comfortable - they're against it. Not because they have facts or logic on their side, but because they regard human beings as a blight on the Earth. External Link
Thanks for administering the fatal dose, Bernie - I've grown tired of hearing this same talking point from the Left over and over again. Why is it that everything the Leftist thinks he knows is wrong?
You're also right about the hatred of the Environmentalist Left for humanity, and it's time we called them on it.
As you state, oil is a global commodity, which means that oil produced, anywhere, affects the world price. As you mention CHina and India are increasing their demand, so it makes sense to increase supply where ever we can.
I'll let others deal with your attempted diversion regarding oil leases.
You make a valid point, we can't and shouldn't over develop our country for any and every commodity we need. But, ANWR is one of the most remote and desolate places in North America. NOBODY visits and only a handful live anywhere near. As to wildlife, it's my understanding that it's also quite limited.
From the pictures and video I've seen, - it's basically flat and ugly. Now, given that the US Government owns 650 million acres or about 30% of what we call the United States of America, I wonder just how much more does it need to preserve? Perhaps if it didnt' own so much, maybe Americans could spread out a little, not live on top of each other, and perhaps open up new vistas for development.
When I speak with people in the industry from the Middle East about expansion plans and they discuss their oil "wealth", they indicate they don't plan on putting all that much back into expanding oil production. They have to build schools, roads, and other things. Plus, as several have pointed out to me, oil is not that important to the US or else they'd be looking for more of it on their own land. I mean people aren't stupid. In most places of the world, they look at what you do or don't do as a sign of your priorities.
Our political leaders have never, never led on this issue. The environmental lobby has. And so we have a do-nothing, myopic energy non-policy crafted by people who know really very little if anything about energy and could give a poop about what it does to the typical American's life and finances.
