The Politics of ANWR...

Boortz hits the nail on the head about gas prices today.

"The problem here is not that the world's supply of oil is running short. The problem is that the supply is undependable. Every time Islamic goons blow up an oil pipeline in Iraq you see a spike in oil prices. Add the terrorism problem to the fact that we don't have enough refining capacity .. and you have expensive gas.

How many years has it been since an oil refinery was built in the United States? I think that it's been over 25 years. Can't you imagine that this is having some affect on getting gas to the pumps for your Summer driving? And then there's all those special blends. We have about 55 different blends for different parts of the country .. all demanded by the eco-whacko crowd. The refineries can't keep up."

Look folks, the price of gas - as with any commodity - is based on pure supply and demand. OPEC tightens the supply + people driving more = higher gas prices. When the supply is increased from other sources and people drive less - low and behold they go down. The fluctuations seem to take forever because crude oil needs to be refined. And once it's turned into home heating oil, jet fuel, diesel, gasoline or whatever it can't be "unrefined". It has to be used as it is. So we could have a surplus of diesel fuel, but a shortage of gasoline - which means now we have to refine more gasoline. Hello?!?

"Any plan to build a new refinery is immediately met by a tidal wave of opposition from so-called "environmental" groups. Ditto for any suggestion that we start retrieving the supplies of crude oil and natural gas from the Gulf shore of Florida and the Pacific coast. No can do, the environmentalists don't like it. Then, of course, there's ANWR. On its best days ANWR looks like a vacant urban lot. Most of the time it looks like an iced-over K-Mart parking lot. There's oil there, but we can't get to it. Again... blame the environmentalists."

Ah, yes. Supply is a biggie and the reason OPEC's power is less than it was, say, thirty years ago when they could actually cause a gas crisis is because oil is being drilled by Mexico and Norway and the UK and Russia and Canada and...well, you get idea. So we need to increase the supply ourselves. The best place to drill is the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) on the Northern Slope of Alaska.

But Gandalf, what about the poor Caribou? What about the local indigenous population? What about the pristine beauty of the land?

OK, first let me refer you to an excellent piece by Johah Goldberg in National Review from back in 2001. Goldberg actually went to this pestilential wasteland that is so hallowed among Eco-Nuts. And it sucks.

"[T]he drilling would be in ANWR, but it wouldn't be where the beauty shots are. It's like doing an on-location report on New York City's urban blight and crime, but broadcasting from a café in Rockefeller Center. The coastal plain is, in fact, a vast tract of peat bog and mud puddles (sounds like a crime fighting duo: "Tune in this fall to see Pete Bog and his fast-talking streetwise sidekick Mudd Puddles, tackle evildoers. Tuesdays at 9.").

The coastal plain is a breeding ground for all sorts of awful flying critters. There are trillions of mosquitoes. There are these creatures called warble flies and nosebots, two bumblebee-like flies that cause the caribou unrelenting grief. I could swear I even saw Alan Dershowitz whiz past my ear."

Now also we're talking about a piece of real estate that is roughly the size of South Carolina. And the amount of land that would actually need to be disturbed would be comparable to the size of Washington-Dulles airport. Why? Because of advance drilling technology. And the operation would barely leave a trace of its activity. As Goldberg explains:

"The oil industry has made huge strides in oil exploration in the last few decades. The oil under the coastal plain could literally be extracted during the dead of winter — when it's night for 58 straight days and no caribou would be dumb enough to come within 500 miles of the Arctic Ocean — and all that would be left come spring would be a couple of Portosan-sized boxes (which the caribou would probably climb onto to catch a better wind and avoid the bugs that breed in their nostrils — I am not kidding)."

Go read the whole thing because for every lame excuse the Greenies can come up with for not drilling, he squashes.

The Democrats in Congress are so beholden to groups like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund, etc. that they play politics on the issue and block it at every opportunity? But aren't the Republicans trying to drill in ANWR because they are beholden to Big Oil? You can make that argument. But you can argue just as convincingly that they want to do it because it's in the interest of the country.

Posted by: Gary at 03:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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