Posted on 02/20/2007 7:00:37 AM PST by thackney
U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens on Monday tossed out a new approach for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Make it part of the nation's emergency stockpile of oil.
The idea came up during a nearly hour-long briefing for news reporters in Anchorage. Alaska's senior senator also talked about the war in Iraq, the Alaska gas pipeline and the interim U.S. attorney.
Stevens, wearing a casual brown shirt and no tie, said he was struck by a Sunday column in The Washington Post that analyzed President Bush's call to expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The stockpile consists of about 700 million barrels of federal-government-owned crude stored for a national emergency in huge salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas. The president can release it if commercial oil supplies are disrupted, and it also can be drawn down for other nonemergency reasons.
Stevens said his staff and Sen. Lisa Murkowski's have been reviewing the president's proposal, publicized last month in his State of the Union speech, to buy more oil for the reserve.
"We came up with the thought 'Why not ask that they add ANWR to the petroleum reserve?' And now this op-ed piece says the same thing," Stevens said.
The refuge lies in the northeast corner of Alaska. Its coastal plain is considered the nation's best onshore prospect for a major oil discovery. It also is an area prized by environmentalists nationally. Efforts in Congress to open the coastal plain to oil development have failed repeatedly over the past three decades.
In his column, Gal Luft, head of the energy security think tank Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, said "reframing the issue to cast the refuge as an emergency stockpile rather than a source of production might well change the politics."
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
But the angle of National Reserve may just be the key to getting that built.
The camel's nose...
I've been saying this for years. Drill the wells, put in the infrastructure, but then cap them.
Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool, huh?
It doesn't do any good if we cannot bring the oil to market in a timely fashion. Will you also spend additional billions to enlarge the pipeline, enlarge the port and not use those either?
Wouldn't this just be one small step away from a nationalized oil supply? I don't like the idea because it gives the oil to the Government when it should be in the hands of private American companies.
Dead on arrival the democrats are not allowing no matter what
It's only "prized by environmentalists nationally" because there's oil under it. Other than that it's pretty much a wasteland.
Thanks for the map. For some reason, I thought that there was recoverable oil just East of the boundary.
100 miles.... sounds like a good engineering opportunity for an enterprising engineer!
Probably not at first. Having the wells drilled and ready to go shaves some years off the total process time. When we are done with that, we can authorise the next step, and then the next step.
The nice thing is that it does get part of our reserves to a place far from hurricanes. And when we finally stop being stupid about it and just use the oil, we don't have to wait 10 years.
ANWR oil already belongs to the federal government. This would make the oil accessible for us the consumers in time of need.
There probably is, but it is believed to be spread out for quite a ways. BP's development of Liberty includes developing new drill rig to reach out 8 miles (I believe the rig is already done).
That only helps if you have supplementary refinery capacity and the ability to transport the oil to them. What you suggest is spending billions without anyway to get the oil in times of need. No thanks.
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