We lost a million barrels of oil production from the gulf, and the price shot up 7 bucks a barrel.
If Clinton hadn't vetoed the bill in 1995, we would have a million barrels a day coming from Alaska.
If we had the million barrels a day, maybe we could take a slightly different approach in Iraq, rather than having to devote so many resources into keeping their 1.8 million barrels a day flowing.
And if it turned out ANWR was bigger than expected (which happens) we might be looking at up to 2 million barrels a day.
The 2,000 acres that they want to open to drilling IS a wasteland. And even if it wasn't, we have oil wells in downtown Los Angelos. Ohio has oil wells all over the state, including INSIDE a wildlife refuge. Oil wells just aren't a big deal -- a pump and some pipes. 2,000 acres out of 11 MILLION acres.
Eventually we will run out of oil. Before that happens, we WILL drill for every last drop of oil we can find. Only a FOOL will believe that, long before we reach that point, we will be drilling in ANWR, off the coasts, and anywhere else we can find oil. And we will be rushed to do so, and not nearly so concerned about the environment.
We should drill ANWR now, when we can do it right, and patiently. If nothing else, we can empty it out so people can stop thinking we have oil, and then we can move on to making synthetic oil.
I dispute this assumption. Drilling for oil in ANWR will be expensive. If there are less-expensive alternative (I think there is an immense future for cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass and other feedstocks), then ANWR doesn't have to be drilled, and won't be. (Furthemore, modest increases in vehicle mileage would do a lot more to reduce our dependence on foreign oil imports than ANWR oil.)
See my post above this for more information on ANWR.
"We lost a million barrels of oil production from the gulf, and the price shot up 7 bucks a barrel.
If Clinton hadn't vetoed the bill in 1995, we would have a million barrels a day coming from Alaska."
This is important to note!!
That extra million barrels a day, in the marginal balance between supply and demand, would have kept oil at $30 a barrel or less in the past 2 years.
It would have saved America about $30 billion in our trade deficit, per year, if you add both the impact on domestic supply and the impact on prices.
We are throwing a way a TRILLION dollars to 'preserve' a parcel of a vast wasteland that would be hardly impacted at all by the drilling anyway.