LAST WEEK, the Senate voted 51-49 in favor of opening a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to energy development. ANWR contains 5.7 to 16 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil, according to U.S. Geological Survey estimates cited by Ben Lieberman of the Heritage Foundation. The entire rest of the United States contains about 21 billion barrels in proven reserves, notes former Alaska governor and secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel, who adds that oil from ANWR could replace all of our annual oil imports from Saudi Arabia for a generation. Production would come from a portion of ANWR consisting of only 2,000 acres, an area about the size of a regional airport in a refuge the size of South Carolina. The drilling would occur only during the winter (which lasts for about nine months) on roads and platforms of ice that protect the tundra below.

Environmentalists have expressed concern about the local caribou population. During some years, one caribou herd (there are 20 in Alaska) visits the part of ANWR at issue. In those years, the herd appears only in the summer when no exploration activity will take place. In all likelihood, the herd will flourish, just as caribou have flourished in nearby Prudhoe Bay. There, according to Hickel, the caribou population has increased from 6,000 to more than 27,000 since drilling began in the late 1970s.