Driling Oil in Alaska

David Jones

English 108

11 February 2007

Drilling Oil In Alaska

Is Drilling Oil in Alaska right or wrong?? Some people believe that it’s a controversial fight for what they believe in. So many people today believe that it is wrong to drill oil in a place so beautiful and others believe something completely different. The question of whether to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge stands clearly on the energy issues table. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a 1.5 million-acre parcel of wilderness area bordering the Arctic Ocean to the north and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to the south. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is currently off limits to oil exploration and production, because of the ecological hazards. How much oil is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? In May 2000, the Energy Information Administration released it's most recent publication, Potential Oil Production from the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Updated Assessment, May 2000 which concluded, "This is the largest unexplored, potentially productive onshore basin in the United States. There is a 95 percent probability that at least 5.7 billion barrels of oil are recoverable." If there were a 95% chance of recovering at least 5.7 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the United States imports approximately 7 million barrels of oil per day, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil would only account for two years worth of oil imports. What we see happening today with respect to the oil market is really no oil shortage, only a temporarily slowdown in oil production.

The new Republican majority has brought the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's (ARWR) oil exploration ban to center stage. Alaska's all Republican Congressional delegation has vowed to repeal the 22-year old ban on the export of the state's North Slope oil. The proposed legislation has caused a political earthquake to shake through the Clinton Administration, which opposes the bill. If the law is passed, it will have important ramifications outside Washington, D.C. allowing companies to drill in Alaska's Northern Slope. This would boost the revenues of American oil companies that would like to explore the area for petroleum. Expansion of the oil industry in the Northern Slope would also create thousands of jobs and decrease U.S. dependency on oil imports from politically turbulent Middle Eastern countries.

From 1944 to 1953, the US Navy and US Geological Survey spent US $50-60 million in exploration and drilled 45 shallow core test wells and 36 test wells. Further exploration conducted by the Navy occurred in the 1970's resulting in 7 additional test wells at a cost of US $500 million.