To Drill Or Not To Drill

Ernie Munoz

January 20, 2006

Research Paper

To Drill, or Not to Drill

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, also known as ANWR, is a nineteen million acre refuge that lies in the northeast corner of Alaska. If ANWR was a state, it would be larger then ten other states including: Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland, and West Virginia. The Coastal Plain area, comprising 1.5 million acres on the northern edge of ANWR, is bordered on the north by the Beaufort Sea, on the east by the U.S. Canadian border, and on the west by the Canning River. As we know it, congress is again considering whether to permit drilling for oil and gas in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ANWR has a lot of barrels of oil down there. In a U.S. geological survey, that was published this year, it estimates that ANWR has a Ninety-five percent chance of holding 3 million barrels of economically recoverable oil at prices of $30 dollars per barrel and a five percent chance of holding 9.7 billion barrels under the same conditions, for a mean estimate of 6.1 billion barrels. Alaska's North Slope has produced about 14 billion barrels since 1977. Drilling for oil in ANWR has been an issue for years. Repeating attempts to approve drilling in ANWR have failed because drilling supporters were unable to get the sixty votes that they needed to overcome a filibuster by opponents. (Herbert par 3) Some people may think that the measure for drilling for oil in ANWR will fail again but I think that it will succeed this time. Certain people may think that drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a bad idea because they think that it will harm them in one way or another but I think that drilling for oil in ANWR is a good idea because it will help the United States in many ways.

Certain people, who are against drilling for oil in ANWR , may think that the drilling is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons being that as it is the United States is already in a thirty-five billion dollar deficit and would not want to get into more debt. Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a democrat who opposes the drilling, says that while the budget package is being advertised as the fiscally responsible thing to do, the tax cuts it would make would gobble up the entire $35 billion in spending cuts, and increase the deficit by another $35 billion. (Ruskin par 9) I do not think that we will go into a $70 billion dollar deficit because if we get all of the oil from ANWR then the prices will start to go down and therefore we would not have to pay as much for oil and gas.

Another reason why a lot of people oppose the drilling in ANWR is because they are afraid that it will endanger their wildlife. Many people in Kaktovik, Alaska question whether the drilling will endanger something that they value most: their traditions. They are afraid that it will endanger their strongest link to the past, which is the bowhead whale hunt. The have this whale hunt every year and they are worried that drilling on land will eventually expand into the waters offshore and therefore result in whale migration. (Blum par 4) President Bush said it himself, "We can and should produce more crude oil here at home in environmentally responsible ways." (QTD in Bishop par 9) Also, Senator Lisa Murkowski, a republican from Alaska, agreed that the refuge's environment will be well protected. (Bishop par 10)

Many people did a lot of things to try to get others to vote against the drilling in ANWR. An environmental group, in an attempt to get others to vote against the drilling, launched an advertising campaign to get wavering republicans to vote against the overall bill and not just the drilling. For instance, the Alaska Coalition and the National Wildlife Federation aired a multiple choice question for Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, a republican who promised to vote against ANWR drilling, which stated, "If you make a promise to oppose oil drilling in ANWR , you should: A. Keep your promise, or B. Break your promise because it turns out that the oil drilling proposal is buried deep in the fine print of an unrelated bill and you never really exactly meant that you would vote no on drilling in the refuge if it was buried deep in the fine print of an unrelated bill." (QTD in Bishop par 19) Coleman said, "the correct answer is A. Keep your promise. (QTD in Bishop par 20) This was one of the things that people did to get others to vote against the drilling.

President Bush and most of the Republicans think that drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is going to help the United States. President Bush thinks that it is a good idea to drill for oil in ANWR because it will increase our domestic energy supply and in return it will help lower gasoline and utility bill prices. (Herbert par 6) A republican representative from California, Richard Pombo, stated that, "This is an aggressive deficit-cutting measure that raises revenue for Uncle Sam, so Uncle Sam does not take it from the taxpayers themselves." (QTD in Ruskin par 4) This will help our economy by not taking as much money off of our worker's paychecks. This will lead to Americans making more money and therefore not worrying about the oil and gas prices as much.

If the United States started drilling for oil in ANWR, then it would create a lot more jobs. This could help the United State's unemployment go down. The last big Alaska oil rush proves that many unemployed people can be provided with jobs. Many people in Seattle, left their homes and families for construction jobs on the North Slope. Others found work in Seattle, in a booming economy that supplied the new pipeline, stretching across a vast expanse between the sea and the oil field. There was a Seattle based General Construction called McCray Construction. (Wong par 3) The sixty-one year old manager from that construction company in Seattle states," It was a very good business time." ( QTD in Wong par 5) The state of Washington benefited from that decade as jobs and money flowed from the construction of the 800-mile of Alaska pipeline, which begins in Prudhoe Bay. (Wong par 6) If that oil rush failed and still managed to help out the state of Washington, I think that if we drill for oil today it might be able to help out our economy, money wise.

If drilling continues to be banned in ANWR then the United States is going to have to make up for some of the revenues that the United States is expecting from oil leases sales in the Alaskan Refuge. How will the United States make up for the revenues it is expecting? In an article