Drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge

With a Democratic majority in congress, the Bush administration's annual efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling have dropped off the radar. The debate over whether the preserve is more important as an ecological haven or a source of US-controlled petroleum continues, however, as Shell battles environmentalists in the courts over offshore Alaskan drilling and Senate Democrats press to permanently protect the 19 million acre territory.

Stay out of ANWR!

The Rational Philosopher - nce again the pattern holds: whenever crude oil hits sixty dollars a barrel, or gasoline creeps up to three dollars a gallon, the clarion call blares from the Right demanding the immediate oil exploration and drilling from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, the supposed answer to America's energy addiction. Just what is the magical attraction for Republicans in this oil Xanadu, this latter-day El Dorado? First, some history. The 9 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Range was created in 1960, and renamed a Refuge under President Carter, who also increased its size to almost 20 million acres, adding a "wilderness" designation...

ANWR Debunked

Repeated Expletives - To start off, ANWR has a total area of 19 million acres of which 8 million are designated wilderness. The area of oil reserves, officially known as the 10-02 Area, comprises a 1.5 million acre strip along the arctic coastal plain adjacent to the existing oil fields at Prudhoe Bay. The government designated the rest of the reserve as “Minimal Management” (for all practical purposes wilderness containing some native settlements). To put this in perspective, the Prudhoe Bay oil fields have an area about one third the size the 10-02 Area. Smaller, but not by an order of magnitude, and the area’s worst spill ever in March of 2006 only contaminated...

12.21.07

11:44 PM -

elbie - Citizens of Alaska want the drilling because it would give them revenue. The land is national, not state. This is not a state issue at all - which is why the Republican house is always involved - we can get oil from so many places in the world, and most of our US reserves aren't close to tapped out - and there's always the Canada option

10:52 PM -

Let the Alaskans decide

resken - The citizens of Alaska want this drilling to happen - isn't it there choice? Keep in mind how huge the reserve is and how little of it this oil drilling would actually effect

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