Today, Congress will meet to debate and vote on the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Last Thursday, a vote by the Senate Budget Committee showed a preference to drilling, with a 12-10 count against Senate filibusters on the legislation later this year.
ANWR, in northeast Alaska, is under increasing pressure to be drilled for oil. Only about 8 percent of the 1.5 million-acre area would be drilled, but to what extent? A task force of Republican United States officials is pressing for the production to take place, hoping to sell the wealthy land to one of many top-bidding oil companies (including British Petroleum and Conoco-Phillips, the two companies with the most Alaskan oil field land at present) for millions of dollars.
The total estimated amount of oil to be drilled from ANWR is 10 billion barrels. That sounds like a lot until you look at the amount of oil consumption in the U.S. in 2003, which is 20.3 million barrels per day, and the projected amount in 2005 being over 22 million per day. This means that the amount of oil would last the U.S. just more than a year (it would last the world about four months). This would only have minimal effect on decreasing the high U.S. and world oil prices.
Of course, at the moment there is a suspension on the export of Alaskan oil products to foreign countries and would (hopefully) be exclusively American oil. This way, the ANWR website, run by Arctic Power, says about 2 million barrels of oil would be produced in the U.S. per day (that is all the Alaskan Pipeline can carry), 1 million of which would come to the continental U.S. and the other would stay in Alaska. This means that the oil would be completely depleted in about 15 years. However, all of this is estimation. Other more environmentally protective sources say as little as 600 million barrels would be recovered, giving the U.S. approximately 27 days worth of oil.
Arctic Power approves of the drilling, and says that up to 10.4 billion barrels would be recovered. They are proud to say that the area is \a frozen, barren land for nine months of the year,"" so it would be good to be doing something productive with the land. No matter which oil company ends up with the leases, ANWR has been assured that the utmost care will be taken, and the most ""environmentally friendly"" techniques will be used. The most environmentally sound techniques still include great amounts of pollution and the disruption of the local wildlife for an extended period of time.
Although many people want ANWR to be dug up and gutted of its natural beauty, there are many environmentalist groups, along with a large number of American citizens, that hope to deter the drilling. Groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council BioGems and the Sierra Club are giving their all because they don't see a field of cash flow when they look upon this Alaskan treasure. Rather, they see a beautiful place of natural land that hasn't even needed government surveillance to preserve it's perfection.
Bush's plan to drill would cut the energy conservation research budget by $21 million dollars, or 2.5 percent. Organizations such as Greenpeace are worried about the alternative and renewable energy efforts and whether this would put a damper on them. These new, environmentally-friendly forms of energy are on the rise in the U.S. and Europe, and their presence would definitely cut down on oil and petroleum dependence. UW-Madison students are helping the effort with their green energy proposals.
You can help save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by contacting the environmentalist organizations mentioned at their websites: www.nrdc.org; www.sierraclub.com; www.greenpeace.org.
Michael Sookochoff is a sophomore planning to major in marketing and journalism.
