Drilling in ANWR
With oil prices reaching new highs, it was inevitable that Republicans would starting talking about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Randy Kuhl has a post on his blog about how wonderful all of this would be.
Rotten takes Kuhl’s arguments apart, but before going into that, I’d like to pose a question: even if it were possible to pump huge amounts of gas each day out of ANWR (it’s not, and I’ll get to that in a second), would that actually lower the price of gas at all? Gas prices are linked with the price of oil per barrel and unless the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were one titanic gusher, it’s very, very unlikely that it would produce enough oil to make a dent in international oil market’s price of oil be barrel.
How much oil is in ANWR? About 10.4 billion barrels, which is half the total proved reserves currently held by the US, but only about 1/25 of the Saudi’s proved reserves and 1/12 of Iraq’s proved reserves. And Rotten points this out about per-day production:
- US oil consumption is 20.6 million barrels per day, or 7.5 billion barrels per year.
- Peak production from ANWR would be 780,000 barrels per day. But that couldn’t be accomplished until 2020, when it will be 2% of our daily oil consumption, assuming a steady increase in oil use. Even assuming zero growth, ANWR’s peak flow is less than 4% of our current daily consumption.
The bottom line is that drilling in ANWR will not significantly reduce the price of oil and not have much of an impact on our dependence on foreign sources of oil. The value of the oil in ANWR is substantial and Republicans can make a valid argument about that, if they wish, but the idea that it will have any serious impact on the oil situation in the US is laughable.
ANWR is a great wet-dream of most Rethuglicans. It’s like a win-win-win for them. Win #1: It doesn’t even matter that drilling in ANWR makes the tiniest dent in our nation’s energy problem, they can say they did something about it. Win #2: Big Oil gets to drill and make money. Win #3: it will allow big industry to enter an environmentally sensitive area (of course, an environmentally sensitive area is a concept that Rethuglicans cannot grasp or believe in, so they mock the concept with their actions).
Thanks for the link. After posting that, I did a little more research. On price, the DOE says that drilling in ANWR will decrease the price of oil by 75 cents/barrel. That’s probably a penny or two per gallon of gas, best possible case.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/economics/story/38223.html
Great points that you make. I could not have said it better myself.
[...] under ANWR. Our congressman, Randy Kuhl thinks it would do us good to go up there and drill. Exile talked about this earlier today. I’m sure Randy’s only got our best interest at heart. Never mind what [...]
Gas is 4 dollars a gallon. Drilling in ANWR is essential, but not enough. No one lives in ANWR and who cares about Caribu when gas is 4 dollars a gallon. Seriously, how many Americans will ever visit ANWR, how many can point to it on a map. I am as green as the next guy, but when I fill up my tank, I can’t make myself give a damn about one football field in the middle of an Arcitic preserve half the size of New England. Politically, this is a winner for Kuhl.
George Will wrote a great editorial last thursday : http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/mostread/s_571034.html
….85 percent of America’s offshore territory off-limits to drilling. The U.S. Minerals Management Service says that restricted area contains perhaps 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — 10 times the oil and 20 times the natural gas Americans use in a year…..
You guys are right that drilling will not have an immediate impact, but it would be billions flowing into the U.S. economy 10 years from now. It will help us then like it helps Russia now. We need to combine drilling with an incentive to increase CAFE standards to 40 or 50 miles per gallon, we need to increase wind and geo-thermal… along with Nuclear, we need to hit this energy problem from all angles. And Drilling is one of those angles.
Drilling in ANWR to fight our dependence on fossil fuels is like trying to kick heroin by finding a new dealer.
And forgive me if I don’t see Putin’s Russia as a role model for anything.
[...] guess what. Does anyone actually think we drill tomorrow and oil flows the day after? Well, maybe Randy Kuhl is hoping for that pot of gold over the rainbow. But Rainbow Randy is [...]