Posted: 12/21/2005
ANWR Defeat Big Blow to Energy Independence
NCPA E-Team Scholar Says Defeat a Big Pay-off to Environmental Lobbyists
DALLAS (December 21, 2005) – Approval of an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling would have been a good step in reducing reliance on foreign oil, according to scholars for the NCPA’s E-Team project.
“ANWR is important not only for the oil it will provide, but for the precedent it sets,” said NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett. “With oil selling for more than 50 dollars per barrel, drilling on other public lands could contribute billions of barrels of oil that currently are off limits to drilling.”
“ANWR should have received an up or down vote,” said Burnett. “But political maneuvering by Senate Democrats beholden to environmental lobbyists have once again prevented that.”
The Senate had blocked initiatives to drill in ANWR over the past 4 years even though the Clinton Administration argued that it could be done in an environmentally friendly manner. In fact, a 1980 law that doubled the size of ANWR to 19 million acres expressly permitted Congress to develop a process through which exploration and production could proceed. And then-President Jimmy Carter hailed the bill as a great compromise that “strikes a balance between protecting areas of great beauty and value and allowing development of Alaska’s vital oil, gas, mineral and timber resource.”
“ANWR is estimated to contain between 6 and 16 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil,” Dr. Burnett added. “And there is no indication that indigenous wildlife would be harmed or hindered in any way, especially since they have flourished along the North Slope and Prudhoe Bay.”