ANWR: Free At Last, Free At Last

The people of the town of Kaktovik are excited about drilling in the desolate tundra that is called ANWR. Hey, the left makes it out to be this bucolic pasture the 6 weeks it is not frozen over, we can call it what we want. The people of Kaktovik there will have full employment and  there property values will improve,

Even the AP can not help itself by pointing out good things can happen:

Reaction to the Senate vote by the state’s political leaders was enthusiastic. For decades, Alaskan politicians have urged Congress to open the refuge to drilling. Those calls grew louder with the decline of oil moving through the trans-Alaska pipeline in recent years.

Democratic state Sen. Donald Olson, whose district and includes Kaktovik, is a longtime supporter of opening the refuge.

“I’m glad that it passed,” he said. “I just want to make sure that the concerns and issues of the local people and Mayor Lon Sonsalla are on the front of our radar screen so they are not overrun by industry.”

Gov. Frank Murkowski said he has no doubts that oil drilling will take place and he expects the state will benefit from the revenues it will share with the federal government.

Opening the refuge to drilling would give oil companies access to an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of crude oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Neal Boortz also has some interesting observations on the ANWAR propaganda spewing from the left:

Caribou?  They don’t care.  The population of the Central Artic caribou herd near the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay has grown an average of 8.5% per year.  The oil exploration operations don’t bother them a bit.

When ANWR was created in 1980 a section was set aside for oil exploration.  It is that area in which the Senate has approved oil exploration.  Imagine that.  Exploring for oil in a section of ANWR that was set aside for exploring for oil.  Who would have thunk it?

Take the highest estimate of oil reserves from ANWR, then take the lowest.  Use those numbers to come up with a mean estimate of ANWR oil potential.  That figure is 10.4 billion barrels of oil.  That much oil could meet the total petroleum consumption needs of the state of New York for 34 years;  Georgia for 54 years, Maine for 259 years, Pennsylvania for 39 years.  That is not an insignificant amount of oil.

If the most optimistic estimates of oil reserves in ANWR turn out to be true, it would be enough to replace 30 years of oil imports from Saudi Arabia.  That is not an insignificant amount of oil.

Will oil production from ANWR exceed estimates?  Who knows?  The estimates for Prudhoe Bay were around eight billion barrels of oil.  So far we’ve extracted 14 billion barrels .. and we’re not near through.  

And the obvious question needs to be posed? If we had started the drilling in ANWR when it was first proposed, would it have had an impact on the price of gas today and taken some of the arrogance out of OPEC?