That is why I am against drilling in Alaska presently. Use that as last resort.
Me, too. What's the sense of pumping oil down into the Strategic Oil Reserve at the same time as pumping it UP from arctic Alaska?
Kind of like an emergency fund, right? Still, it will be cheaper to do the drilling now than later; we only have to pump a token amount until we really need it. It will take years to bring it on line anyway.
Given the time (~10 years) it takes to bring a new area like ANWR online and how quickly the oil market changed in the last 5 years, that does not make any sense. Develop our resources and use the federal royalties and lease sale profits to further the oil shale production and technologies.
1 Trillion Barrels Recoverable of Domestic Transportation Fuels