Our Never-ending Oil Dependence

We opened 2011 with the highest gas prices ever, the average being $3.06 per gallon, and yet we also have a seven-year moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off our east and west coasts. We also have a permanent ban on drilling in ANWR.

The good news is that we have a petroleum supply within our borders that is estimated to be more than the whole of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran combined.

The bad news is we are prohibited from extracting it.

When will we get past the myths and rhetoric and learn the truth about ANWR?

1. The Artic National Wildlife Refuge is described (by people who have never been there) as a pristine wilderness full of natural beauty.

It is no such thing! Most of it is a flat and frozen wasteland. To decry the exploration and exploitation of the petroleum in ANWR because “we need to save it—the refuge, not the oil—for future generations” is ridiculous, too. Who in their right mind would go there as a tourist? The only way to see it would be from the air, and few of us are willing or able to afford a plane or helicopter ride that would require a flight of over 500 miles and use quite a lot of fossil fuel in the bargain. There are few animals up there to see, as they only migrate seasonally, and then only for a few months. It is too cold up there even for the caribou most of the year.

How do I know this? I admit that I haven’t been up there—I wouldn’t care to go—but I have seen pictures of ANWR and I’ve also watched a couple of the shows on television about it. I notice that the video is taken from the air, except for a few occasions when the crew gets on the ground for a short period. I surmise that humans don’t do well in that climate out in the open. Perhaps Al Gore’s global warming theory will kick in and warm the arctic up some, but I seriously doubt that.

2. Another argument against drilling in ANWR is that there is a finite amount of oil up there that would probably only last six months.

I suppose that is another of those myths that goes along with the idea proposed back in the 1970s that we would run out of petroleum worldwide within ten years. There has only been a cursory estimate of the oil in ANWR with no follow up exploration so far. Let’s face it, nobody has been allowed to make an accurate assessment of the petroleum reserves to date. However, every prior oil field that has been opened up has proven to exceed original estimates. I have read that there might be enough oil in that region to last us for over one hundred years. I suspect that the true reserves lie somewhere between the two estimates, but no oil company would risk all the capital required to open ANWR unless they thought it was going to be a long-term venture.

3. The drilling is supposed to be unsightly and hazardous to the wildlife.

My wife and I have driven through the Permian Basin just west of Midland-Odessa many times. I have to admit that while it is an impressive sight to see thousands of oil rigs pumping oil from horizon to horizon, it is rather unsightly too. I did note that every time I go through the Permian Basin, I see some new wells being drilled, and they have been drilling there for over one hundred years already. Funny that the “black gold” just keeps on flowing, isn’t it? I also noticed that there is little wildlife out there, and human habitation is mostly non-existent. There are only a few scattered towns in the basin, and they aren’t very populous.

Regardless of the blight on the landscape in the Permian Basin, the ANWR would have no such sights. Modern technology allows drilling multiple wells from one platform. A one-acre sight could be used to develop and drill several square miles of the refuge. There would be no ugly pumps, and the oil would be piped immediately out of ANWR to a port or down into the Alaskan Pipeline—the latter is obviously the more preferable transport.

Oh yes, one other benefit might accrue. You may recall that the Alaskan Pipeline, which was supposed to be detrimental to the migrating caribou turned out to be a magnet for them instead. They apparently liked the heat it generated. Extension of the pipeline to accommodate the oil coming out of ANWR would probably also attract the caribou, so they might be better off for having it there.

We might be able to cut back on our use of fossil fuels—a total misnomer in itself--but it will take a long time to do that. We will be dependent on oil for many years, and we cannot afford to rely on OPEC anymore. We must develop our own resources until we are able to convert to other renewable sources of energy. ANWR figures heavily in that plan, and it is time we got to work there.

Shale oil from deep beneath the Rocky Mountains is also a future source, but the environmentalists are already demonizing the oil companies for their supposed use of toxic chemicals to extract oil and natural gas from the shale. Whether true or not, there are seeds of doubt sown to destroy that industry before it ever gets started.

In the short term, we will have to continue to tap the wells in the continental United States and off our coasts. ANWR is at best 8-10 years from the first oil production even if we start exploring and developing the fields today. Our best supply is from the existing fields, mostly off the coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Regarding that BP oil spill last summer, the only lasting damage seems to be the moratorium on drilling imposed by our president. That is not only preventing us from keeping oil and gas prices down, but is also adding to the continuing unemployment for all the workers engaged in the drilling and subsidiary businesses.

Our existing oil wells are our best means of getting oil prices back down, since it will take years to develop the wells in ANWR. We are the only oil-producing country in the Western Hemisphere that is not currently drilling off our coasts, so it isn’t as though the ecosystem isn’t already at risk. If that’s what we’re worried about, our technology is superior to that of those other countries, so there is small chance we will harm the Gulf of the oceans further.

We started our push for oil independence during the Nixon Administration 45 years ago, and we are worse off today than we were way back then. When will we ever do the right thing?