You are right on the money, open range land it is. Californians better be careful in joining any criticism on this activity. The massive quantities of gas from the Powder to CA can just as easily go east.
Really! I live on Long Island ('bout as "coastal margin" as you want to be, and not be in a boat). And I think of NY City as a hotbed of "cosmopolitan provincialism". Cosmopolitan, yes--they rub elbows with people from all over. But provincial, in the sense that so many of them give the impression that they have never been 20 miles west of the Hudson River.The trouble is, they mostly weren't born in Oklahoma, so they don't ever drive for 3 days to get back home. Naturally their perspective is distorted. People just aren't born with a sense of perspective about distances, or indeed quantities in general. Folks in NYC probably compare ANWR to Central Park. That's wrong both ways--ANWR is vastly larger on the one hand, and it's tiny in the context of Alaska (never mind Canada, why doesn't Canadian open space count?!) on the other.
So I think drilling in ANWR is about like putting another statue in Central Park. No big deal, given a good reason.