Posted: 12/12/2004 | Author: H. Sterling Burnett
Drilling for Oil: Domestic exploration will curb dependency on often-unstable countries
It will be decades at least before alternative fuel vehicles and the infrastructure needed to fuel them will be developed enough to satisfy America’s transportation needs. Also, oil is a critical component of plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, lubricants and construction materials.
This means that Americans will need oil well into this century. Unfortunately, the United States uses more oil than it can produce, making it dependent on supplies from unstable parts of the world. While America will never have complete energy independence, Congress should remove obstacles to domestic production both to reduce energy prices and so that, in times of crisis, our prosperity is not held hostage to hostile foreign powers.
America’s remaining large deposits of oil lie under public lands and offshore. Regrettably, these areas have been placed off-limits to oil production due to environmental concerns. For 24 years, for example, Congress has wrestled with the question of whether to open a small part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, less than half of 1 percent, to oil and gas exploration and development.
Environmental lobbyists, opposed to oil production on public lands, claim that the oil in ANWR equals only a six-month supply. This is true, however, only if one imagines that the United States stopped using oil from any other source—no imports, no domestic production, nothing else—which is unrealistic.
To put the matter in proper perspective, the Energy Information Agency estimates that ANWR contains between 6 billion and 16 billion barrels of oil. By comparison, the United States imports 7 million barrels of oil per day. If only 6 billion barrels of oil were recovered in ANWR, in a time of emergency, the United States could cut all imports of foreign oil for two years with little or no effect on our economy. Or, ANWR could free us from Saudi Arabian oil for more than 20 years.
And there is no reason for thinking that oil production and environmental quality are incompatible. Caribou herds have expanded in and around Prudhoe Bay and other wildlife have flourished as well, apparently unaffected by the relatively primitive (by today’s standards) oil and gas development in the area.
Environmental groups, including the Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society, allow oil drilling on some of their most unique properties. They would hardly allow this if oil and gas production were harmful to their preserves. As with the rest of the economy, technology has improved in the oil patch.
Environmentalists’ objections to drilling on public lands aren’t really about protecting pristine places at all. Rather, it is about restricting Americans’ energy choices.
Otherwise, how can one explain their legal efforts to stop the federal government from accessing oil in the National Petroleum Reserve—an area set aside in 1923 specifically for oil production.
Environmentalists have long argued that oil exploration in ANWR was not needed because the NPR was nearby, yet when the Bush administration proposed opening new areas in the NPR to development in January 2004, environmental groups sued to stop exploration.
The United States has more than 100 million acres of designated or defacto wilderness and roadless areas; not to mention millions of acres protected as national parks. All of this land is off-limit to energy production.
On remaining parcels of public lands, except where production would be incompatible with unique characteristics or with specific purposes, environmentally sensitive exploration should at least be an option.