A Case for Opening ANWR

As someone who was born and raised in Alaska, I want to address some misconceptions about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Many people believe that developing ANWR would destroy an otherwise pristine wilderness in exchange for just six months’ worth of oil. But such statements rely upon misleading or false facts for their support; in truth, ANWR is a 19-million-acre region, of which eight million acres have already been put into formal wilderness status and an additional 9.5 million acres are designated as wildlife refuge. Those 17.5 million acres form a protected area, nearly as large as the state of South Carolina, that can never be developed—and never should be.

The remaining 1.5 million acres make up the coastal plain which, according to the latest U.S. Geological Survey estimate, contain a mean of 7.7 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil (this excludes State and Native areas). Those opposed to the development of ANWR argue that the region would only produce 3.2 billion barrels, a strikingly conservative and low-end estimate. Even according to those statistics, however, ANWR would still be the second largest field ever discovered in the United States, second only to Prudhoe Bay. (Prudhoe Bay, though, is hardly a polluted oil field because the North Slope’s petroleum industry is the cleanest, most technologically advanced and most heavily regulated in the world).

Also, eight billion recovered barrels would be the equivalent of our entire domestic use of oil for well over a year, not just six months. Important to note, though, is that no policy-maker has argued that we should open ANWR to development and then become independent of the use of foreign oil. Rather, the oil produced would be used to supplement our imports for the next 20 years.

According to agencies that would coordinate the coastal plain development, only an estimated 2,000 acres would be needed. That number represents approximately 1/10,000th of ANWR. Some environmentalists claim that the coastal plain is the last five percent of the Arctic coastline (not the Alaskan coastline) that has not been drilled, but this figure is false. A mere 14 percent of the entire 1,100-mile Arctic coastal plain has been opened to oil exploration. Furthermore, exploration and development usually occur during the cold winter months, when the temperature falls below 40 degrees Fahrenheit and when there are 56 days of total darkness. If a well has been determined dry, it is capped off and there is little evidence of work when the ice melts in the spring.

Exploration and development of regions like ANWR has also changed in recent years due to improved technology such as the development of a directional drill bit, which utilizes horizontal drilling and dramatically reduces the number of oil wells used in drilling. Such technological advances would allow the development of ANWR to be done much less intrusively than what was previously possible.

To understand how development in ANWR could affect the wildlife, the best available information comes from Prudhoe Bay, which is located about 80 miles away. Foremost, there are no listed endangered species living on the coastal plain. Of the animal species affected by opening ANWR, many people seem to focus on the Porcupine caribou herd, which migrates to the coastal plain in the summer. Many do not realize, though, that the herd not only travels past 89 dry oil wells drilled by the Canadian government when it travels from Canada to ANWR, but that is also crosses Canada’s Dempster Highway en route. Neither of these factors have shown to hinder the species’ migration or survival.

In addition, the Central Arctic caribou herd that inhabits part of Prudhoe Bay has grown from 6,000 in 1978 to 27,000 today, according to the most recent estimate by state and federal wildlife agencies. The Inupiat Eskimos, who count on the wildlife as a source of their livelihood, have witnessed how the development of Prudhoe Bay has coexisted with a thriving wildlife community. The same balance and support is possible with ANWR.

Furthermore, the coastal plain is far from a pristine wilderness untouched by human hands, unlike the other 17.5 million acres already protected. It is a flat, treeless, almost featureless plain in northeastern Alaska home to a military radar site and the Inupiat Eskimo community of Kaktovik, a village of 260 complete with houses, stores, a school, power lines and many other modern-day facilities. The town even has its own oil well.

We should work toward energy conservation and efficiency because the development of the coastal plain would by no means make us independent of foreign oil. Imports of crude oil and refined products now cost the nation an annual $40 billion. According the U.S. Department of Commerce, oil represents the largest single commodity in the U.S. Balance of Trade deficit with other nations. But with the development of ANWR, our increased domestic production would decrease the deficit caused by crude oil imports, all the while, according to Wharton Economic Forecasting Associations, creating an estimated 736,000 jobs.

These jobs would also spread throughout the nation in the production, manufacturing and service sectors. Federal revenues would increase by tens of billions of dollars from bonus bids, lease rentals, royalties and taxes.

I, along with 75 percent of Alaskans and the Inupiat Eskimos that live in ANWR, do not believe that reasonable development in just 2,000 of the 19 million acres in ANWR is wrong. The region holds resources that America needs, which can, and should be, safely extracted without destruction to the ecosystem.

James M. McElligott ’03 is an economics concentrator in Mather house.