Brian Balta Writes -

Maybe someone else can help me figure this out, but I doubt it. I've literally been trying for months to understand how in the world drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has actually become a political issue, but for some reason, the answer is just beyond my grasp. To me, it just seems to be the most pointless political debate ever. It's remarkable. The debate going on over drilling in ANWR is a debate so completely devoid of any factual information that it is startling.

Here is how the debate shapes up, and I'll admit that there naturally will be some crossover of viewpoints, but from this point on I am going to speak in terms of general political beliefs. If you go up to the average Republican these days and ask them about ANWR, they'll tell you how the site has the potential to offset our imports from the Middle East for thirty years. Then they'll tell you how those crazy environmentalists are threatening our national security by forcing us to import more oil from those people in the Middle East who hate us. Then, if you go & talk to the average Democrat, you'll hear about how the oil in ANWR is only enough to offset the U.S.'s oil consumption for six months. Finally, you'll then hear about how the oil industry owns the Bush administration and how they're out to destroy the last area of pristine wilderness in the U.S. In all honesty, I really want to smack some of the people who say these things upside the head and tell them to wake up & think about what they're saying, because the entire debate just simply doesn't make sense.

The first point I would like to deal with is the amount of oil in ANWR. Each side has their own opinion of how much is there, with the Republicans giving a thirty year figure and the Democrats giving a six month figure. The sad thing is, they're both right. The United States Geological Survey has given estimates that ANWR holds somewhere between 6 billion and 12 billion barrels of oil. Those are the best estimates available, since no exploratory drilling has been allowed in the area. But no matter which estimate is used, the amount of oil in this area is still far less than a tenth of the amount that can be found in just about any country in the Middle East. The estimates given by each side? I personally would call them the definition of fuzzy math.

The Democratic 6 month argument would be what would happen if the oil in ANWR was used entirely in one massive pumping session. Obviously, that simply couldn't happen, and every time I hear a Democrat say that number, I just roll my eyes in shame. The Republican figure? That one takes the amount that would be produced at maximum capacity and says that the oil produced at this level would be about the same amount imported from Saudi Arabia or Iraq. Now, this would seem to be a good thing right? However, one can't forget those darn annoying other facts that always inconveniently confuse the simple argument. For instance, almost everyone giving this figure casually forgets to point out that it would take until about 2010 to even start getting oil out of ANWR if we started drilling there today. Also, it would take until about 2025 until we finally got that field up to maximum production capacity.

Think about that fact in the particular context of the Bush administration being a few months away from trying to turn Iraq into a U.S. colony. Then, think about whether or not the rest of the Middle Eastern nations could even afford to cut down on the supply of oil going to the U.S. with their economies weakening and their people becoming more and more discontent. In reality, even reducing the supply of oil to the U.S. these days by any substantial amount would directly weaken whatever regime chose to do so. That is why no other nation other than Iraq has used oil as a way to protest the Israeli attacks in the west bank; they simply cannot afford to do so. Finally, ponder for a second whether or not it is likely that the consumption of oil in both the U.S. and the world will not increase in the next 25 years, and an increase in consumption would cause us to need still more oil even if we produced more. With these facts in hand, I say it really becomes time to look at those ANWR arguments again.

Next, we'll take the on the environmental argument. From the right, you'll often hear the claims made that oil drilling technology has kept improving, and the damage to the environment will be minimal. Also you'll hear the claim that the proposal to drill in ANWR has been limited to only 2,000 thousand square miles of space that will be allowed to be developed. Now, in all honesty, when and where in this world has drilling for oil not affected the local environment in any way? We have oil rigs sliding into the sea, oil spills from tankers, pipeline breaks, fires, noise pollution, and all sorts of other problems associated with the drilling. No matter how high-tech something may be, transporting thousands of tons of equipment across land, setting the equipment up, drilling giant holes in the ground, and then transporting a dangerous, flammable liquid back across thousands of miles is going to cause some problems.

In addition, the clause attached to the energy bill passed by the House which limits developed area to only a 2,000 square miles of the ANWR shore is just about as close to a lie as one can get. In reality, the way the clause is worded, the only areas that are counted in this count of land include those that are directly developed. If you were in the area that was being drilled and you took a step off the side of the road for some reason, you would no longer be on developed land. Likewise, if you walked a few feet away from the exact location of one of the buildings in the region, the land you're walking on would no longer be considered developed. Only areas that specifically have developed property on top of them would be counted the way this measure works. This sort of bookkeeping is one step away from bald-faced lying, and anyone who actually uses this argument should be ashamed of himself.

Now, let's examine the other side, shall we? I cannot tell you any more how many times I have heard the phrase "Pristine wilderness" used to describe ANWR. Supposedly it is the last, great, unspoiled area in the Americas, a place that we should preserve so that other generations can see its natural beauty. Bull. Do you know what tundra is? Tundra is a giant sheet of frozen nothingness. It's a giant wasteland. The area in question is locked away deep in the arctic. It is constantly frozen, very little can grow there, and if someone wanted to take a vacation in ANWR, he'd have to bundle up to avoid dying of the cold. There are a few animals that live there, true, but overall, there just isn't anything there, and anyone who uses the pristine wilderness line is spinning just as much as the person on the right.

To top it all off, you'll hear many argue that drilling in ANWR will threaten the existence of the Alaskan Caribou herd, since the area is their mating ground. Unfortunately, it seems that people have forgotten that the exact same argument was used against the Alaskan Pipeline before it was constructed, and the herd has actually grown since then. Caribou are fairly highly developed mammals, I'm sure they'll manage. And even if they don't, any company that would be willing to drill up there would be sure to take extra care not to hurt the caribou herd, since there will naturally be dozens of scientists watching the herd just in case something were to start happening to them. A problem up there could curtail domestic oil production for decades if people started complaining enough, so it would not be in the interest of anyone who would drill to let anything happen to the caribou herd. No matter which side one falls on, the environmental arguments for both are just silly, spin-filled garbage.

Finally, I'd like to touch on the economic arguments for the drilling. Now that oil prices are spiking again, you hear many argue that increasing U.S. production will help keep gas prices down at the pumps, because we won't be at the mercy of OPEC oil producers as much. Sadly, once again, the facts are just plain missing from this argument. Producing oil in the Middle East, a giant, oil-flooded region with good access to water transportation and few environmentally sensitive areas, costs about $1.50 per barrel, depending on location. To produce oil in Alaska, a giant, frozen piece of tundra with hard to reach oil and little transportation access, costs about $7.50 per barrel. For those trying to use the economic argument to support drilling, this is a capitalistic nightmare. This huge price gap means that it just isn't worth the effort for people to drill in Alaska as long as there is any oil available at all in the Middle East, or in many other areas of the world where it is more easily accessible.

In the 1980's in Britain, one of Margaret Thatcher's greatest triumphs was her victory over the state-supported coal mining industry. That industry was producing a product at a price far higher than the remainder of the world could produce and only existed because of government subsidies on the coal. Prime Minister Thatcher had to endure a year-long strike and street riots to end those subsidies, but in the end, she was able to gain victory over the strikers and allow market forces to control whether or not coal was mined in Britain. Today, there are less than 1,000 coal miners in Britain as opposed to over 100,000 in the 1980's, because the miners simply could not produce their product at a low enough cost to be competitive. This is the problem with this last argument for drilling; it ends up forcing uncompetitive oil onto the market.

Like I said, I still can't figure out why in the world this is an issue. For some strange reason, the environmentalist movement has made saving ANWR a crusade. In the meantime, the Bush administration has made drilling in ANWR the virtual center of its energy policy. To me it seems that the only reason each of these sides is even in this debate is to avoid losing to the other side. The environmentalists cannot stand to allow the oil industry to gain even a symbolic victory, while the conservatives absolutely cannot tolerate the environmental movement having anything it could remotely call success.

Luckily, as those fools go off and engage in a remarkable example of a debate without facts, the rest of the world is paying more attention to stuff that could actually make a difference. For instance, the European Union and other nations banded together to pass the Kyoto protocol which would help cut down on CO2 emissions and, in many cases, reduce consumption, even though the treaty would cost businesses billions. On the other hand, the U.S. energy industry has had its lobbyists throwing all their weight around to try to get the administration to weaken the Clean Air Act, so that they could save money by not having to pay for litigation, even if it costs people their health. If anyone out there honestly wants to engage in a debate on energy policy, why not do it on issues which would actually make a difference, such as these two? Instead, our leaders have chosen to embarrass themselves by trying to make ANWR into something it can and should never be; a viable political issue.

Posted by Lance Moran