Drilling in ANWR.

Few topics enrage Liberals like the idea of drilling in ANWR. Yet most people do not know what ANWR is.  The Following is based on a couple emails that have come to me, and instead of passing them along, I'd make a page out of it rewrite it and see if I can't get more eyes on it.

ANWR is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is located in the north eastern corner of Alaska, and it is a massive area. Size wise, it is beyond huge. It is about the same size as most Eastern States, which is just smaller than Al Gore's ego. We are talking about 19 Million acres of ground.

All the fuss about ANWR is about the proposed drilling for oil there. The big evil oil companies want to tap in an area that is only about 2000 acres. Roughly the size of some of the horse ranches around where I live. That's a Dot on the map of Alaska. That's even just a dot on the map of ANWR. Now the important thing to know here is where that location is.

The Liberals would love to show you gorgeous photos of ANWR... like these:

Indeed, that is some beautiful scenery. But that is not where the oil is. The oil, and where they want to drill is along the coastal plain. An area where there is little growth... National Geographic is not going be paying visits too. There are not Condors or Spotted Owls or Black Footed Ferrets... it is a very desolate, harsh, all around unpleasant place. We call places like this Wasteland. We call it that for a reason... it's a waste of space. Few animals venture into this area. There is little food, no cover to hide in from predators... it's just a big flat wasteland.

One of the species that does inhabit this contested wasteland, are Caribou. The fear the Liberals have is that the Caribou will be disturbed and be stressed because of the oil development.

We can see that they are very disturbed in this photo. They look quite traumatized, don't they? Actually, no. They are quite relaxed and enjoying themselves. This is not unique to ANWR either, same thing happens with deer and antelope in the Uintah Basin. Oil rigs are busy pumping oil, and in the surrounding desert, plenty of wildlife hanging around there when they could be elsewhere. Oil Development does not disturb the wildlife.

This ANWR Coastal Plain area is near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. This is where we get a full 17% of our domestic oil. That is considerable amount considering we only bring in 11% of our oil from the Middle East. Tapping into ANWR could double the oil production in Alaska and that would significantly reduce the cost of oil and the cost of fuel. This would also reduce our dependency on Middle Eastern oil... and that means would have fewer reasons to be over there.  Here is a photo of a Prudhoe Bay oil site...  Same site in the above photo with the Caribou.   The ANWR area will be much the same, but they will be operating only during the winter, when there is thick ice on the ground.  When you put your platform up on ice, drill, then move the rig... when the ice melts there is no sign of any oil development.  It is like it never happened there.  We are seeing this here in the Uintah Basin... I have good friends in the oil business and they have confirmed that it is a zero footprint operation.   It doesn't get any more Green than that.

We need to tap Alaska. And we need to do it now.

Copyright G H Hill 1999-2012