I’ve been thinking on and off about last week’s vote in the Senate paving the way for oil exploration and drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. I feel the following bullet points more or less sum up my feelings on the issue:
- Senate Republicans used a parliamentary trick to avoid having to come up with sixty votes in support of drilling, which they knew they couldn’t muster. Now that this precedent has been set, they could conceivably use the same tactic to push through any other piece of crackpot legislation.
- By all reasonable estimates, the oilfield in question could produce around 1 million barrels of oil a day. Current oil consumption in the U.S. is about 20 million barrels a day.
- Supporters of opening the refuge repeatedly cited national security and “defending America” in support of their position, claiming that our growing dependence on foreign oil necessitated drilling in ANWR. See above point re: 20 million barrels per day versus 1 million barrels per day.
- Also cited as a reason to open the refuge for drilling (specifically by Jim Thune, the junior Senator for South Dakota) were the recent and rather precipitous rises in gasoline prices. Again, see above point re: 20 million barrels per day versus 1 billion barrels per day.
- A number of major oil companies, including BP and Conoco-Phillips, have moved on from their initial interest in ANWR drilling.
- Ted Stevenson (R-AK), the main cheerleader in the Senate for opening up the reserve, when pressed by reporters to justify his support for the legislation in spite of the fact that it is generally unpopular with a majority of the public, responded testily that “We won last November, and we said we were going to do this if we won.” Well, touché.
In conclusion, an unsurprising collection of specious reasoning and flat-out dishonesty by a bunch of partisan hacks who are clearly more interested in short-term political gain than the long-term health of either the economy or the environment.