It’s the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area roughly the size of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and New Jersey combined, in a state, Alaska, that is nearly two-and-a-half times bigger than Texas.
A small sliver, about 1.5 million acres on its coastal plain, is the area Congress and President Carter specifically set aside in 1980 for the purpose of future energy development.
And it’s been at the heart of more than four decades of debate over whether or not Americans can produce more of the energy they rightfully own on federal lands right here at home. We’ve chosen not to, and import foreign oil, instead.
Some call the flat, frozen stretch of tundra a “pristine wilderness” or “America’s Serengeti.” Some 40 years ago, the same folks were calling it the coastal plain and advocating the construction of an oil pipeline across the region (instead of the trans-Alaska route we have now) because it “has practically no exceptional or unique natural values”.
The Department of Energy has called it the “largest unexplored, potentially productive geologic onshore basin in the United States.” The region’s only inhabitants, the Inupiat Eskimos of the Village of Kaktovik, call it home. And they support responsible energy development right in their backyard.
After nearly 30 years of witnessing firsthand the successful coexistence of wildlife and the development of Arctic Alaska’s vast domestic energy supplies, and seeing the region’s caribou herds on which they depend for survival increase in population from roughly 5,000 before development began at Prudhoe Bay to more than 67,000 today, they know we can produce our energy with minimal effect on their land, wildlife and way of life.
But, as in just about every other energy debate Washington’s had over the last several decades, these facts don’t matter to some. Sure the caribou population at Prudhoe Bay has increased by 1,340 percent since development began there. But developing energy 70 miles to the east on 0.01 percent of the nearly 20-million-acre refuge would “devastate” the caribou herds.
Sure it’s been 30 years since the coastal plain was set aside for future energy development and almost 15 years since President Clinton vetoed legislation that would have finally opened the region to development. And yes, our dependence on foreign energy imports has more than doubled during that time. But it would take 10 years to get the oil.
Sure, more than 75 percent of Alaskans and more than 50 percent of Americans support responsible development in ANWR.
But so what?
A small minority opposed to American energy and economic growth oppose it, and they’re in charge of all three branches of our government.
And what about the 86 billion barrels of oil that continue to lie fallow beneath the 97 percent of our outer continental shelf?The government has yet to lease them for energy exploration?
Sure, the National Academy of Sciences has found that the majority — 62 percent — of all oil found in the marine environment is the result of natural seeps through the ocean floor. Sure, it’s true that less than 1 percent of all oil found in the marine environment comes from offshore oil and gas development.
And yes, the Clinton administration issued an extensive report detailing the environmental benefits of advanced oil and natural gas exploration and production technologies. But finally allowing Americans to access more of the energy they rightfully own off our shores will, allegedly, devastate our oceans, destroy our beaches and kill all of our fish.
Sure, the vast majority of Americans support tapping more of our vast offshore energy resources. And yes, the government responded to the will of the people last year and lifted the decades-old bans on responsible offshore energy exploration.
Or did they? It’s been nearly a year since those bans were retired and we’re not a single step closer to accessing that “newly available” American energy.
And if the decades-old ANWR debate is any indication, it will probably be several more years before the government, and the groups who manipulate its branches, bow down to the facts and the people, and allow America to put Americans to work producing more American energy.
Or maybe the government will continue to ignore the facts, the best interests of our nation’s economy, and the will of the American people and loan tens of billions of dollars more to foreign nations to help them develop their energy supplies instead?
Kevin Kennedy is director of federal affairs for the American Energy Alliance.
