I recently read a publication by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (published during the Clinton administration, citation below) that presented a short history of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and a summary of the wildlife resources that occur on the Coastal Plain. Not surprisingly the writers conclude that the area proposed for oil exploration should remain forever off limits. They use noble prose extolling our high calling to worship Mother Nature and disdaining our efforts to destroy her ever so fragile home. You get the feeling you must hold your breath because merely breathing on it will destroy it “irreparably” (they like that word).

The article reprises quotes from several preservationists, including one of their high idols, Cecil Andrus, Former Secretary of the Interior under President Jimmy Carter. He said about the ANWR:

"In some places, such as the Arctic Range, the wildlife and natural values are so
magnificent and so enduring that they transcend the value of any mineral that
may lie beneath the surface. Such minerals are finite. Production inevitably
means changes whose impacts will be measured in geologic time in order to gain
marginal benefits that may last a few years."

Anyone trying to get a permit from the Service to develop a piece of land has heard all this before. I have seen similar language used to justify permit denials for filling in a muddy tire rut on an empty lot because some allegedly endangered fairy shrimp showed up in it. That is the problem with state and federal environmental agencies. They are filled with idealistic biologists who cannot bring themselves to balance competing interests in the use of natural resources. No undeveloped piece of land is too small, too disturbed, or too isolated to stop it from being developed. Their only answer is to say no to everything and duck when the yelling starts. Sometimes they win, and sometimes they lose, but in any case, it is expensive. It takes months, if not years, to get a reasonable decision from these agencies on even the most trivial of impacts because the landowner must delicately appeal staff decisions to multiple levels of senior management, sometimes all the way to the top.

So, with that background, we are now asked to believe that the ANWR is so sacrosanct and pristine that even walking on it will do harm with incalculable repercussions for the entire region? I think not.



Without going through each of their arguments, which is easy to do, but perhaps a bit boring for most, I’ll cover a few of the main points. I have the same information they do, but I believe I have a more rational and balance outlook. I am, after all, a conservative.

• First, we are only talking about 2,000 acres of oilfield development out of 1.5 million acres on the coastal plain. The entire ANWR is 19 million acres. We cannot access this postage stamp sized area without destroying the entire northern hemisphere? Give me a break.

• The doomsday scenarios proffered assume no advancement in exploration and production technology since 1960. Comparing dated technology to the current sophistication in oilfield development and product transport is like comparing a paddle boat  to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. Most of the potential impacts discussed in the Service article can be avoided, and has been avoided in other regions around the world for decades. Prudhoe Bay has been an ideal testing ground for all manner of new technologies that minimize or eliminate impacts.

• The area in question is not pristine to begin with. There are natives nearby in the town of Kaktovik. They have homes, roads, power lines, wells, etc, and they hunt the animals in question. The U.S. military has a manned early warning radar facility there. It’s not like there are no impacts in the area today.

• The article mentioned that there is unlikely to be much oil in the ANWR and that it was not worth the effort to get it. Funny, several federal agencies think otherwise. The USGS, for example, estimated that daily production from ANWR would exceed what is now being produced in any other state, including Texas or Louisiana; for many years to come.

• But most importantly, biologists love to speculate that any disturbance of a species’ natural habitat will automatically have far reaching and “irreparable” consequences to the species ultimate survival. This “reality” is held irrespective of the facts or past experience that is almost never so dire. Yet, for a layman to challenge this viewpoint is to be labeled uneducated and ignorant. For a biologist to challenge it is to be accused of being a prostitute to industry. No biologist wants to be accused of sacrificing his integrity for a paycheck, so most who know better just sit down and shut up. Internal dissension is harshly quashed behind the scenes.

In this case, the Service article addresses several potential impacts that they concluded will irreparably impact the entire ANWR. They call this frozen, dark, featureless, and desolate place the “Heart of the ANWR”. Quick. Someone break out the defibrillator. Some examples of such hated impacts are running a snow tractor across a frozen field, or disturbing (i.e. being observed by) caribou or muskoxen. It makes many far fetched assumptions and ignores past experience that had neutral consequences. When challenged, their response is that this time it will be different; irreparably. Right. Do I hear someone crying “wolf”?

I could write a book on all the arguments and counter arguments centered around these misguided policies and rules, but this is not the forum. The bottom line is that most science today is based on conclusions arrived at with little or totally absent empirical data. It’s called Junk Science. True scientific method commands that one gather data and live with the results, even if the results are unexpected. Junk science is forming a conclusion, then looking for the evidence to support it. But, if the evidence is not available, they don’t let minor problems like that get in the way. We have a planet to save.

Many of the policies of environmental agencies are based on inadequate evidence. But, as with global warming, a totally fabricated computer model theory, bureaucrats are willing and anxious to promulgate policy anyway because, in their view, the consequences of inaction are too dire not to act. Problem is, we don’t even know that a problem exists let alone how to fix it.

So, the point of this post is this: Just because a big agency of the federal government says it is so, does not necessarily make it so. The Service’s opinion of the effects of drilling in the ANWR is Exhibit A.

Citation: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2000. Potential impacts of proposed oil and gas development on the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain: Historical overview and issues of concern. Web page of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Fairbanks, Alaska. 18 October 2000.

My focus on oil in this blog might lead one to believe that I do not support alternative energy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any process that produces energy in a responsible and environmentally benign manner should be pursued with enthusiasm. My point is, we know oil. We know where it is, how to get it safely, how to refine it, and there is a distribution system in place that gets it to the market quickly and efficiently. If an alternative source that replaces the current oil based economy arises, it will not be for decades. So, while we pursue other energy sources, our main focus should be getting more oil from within our own shores.

The price of oil should further create an incentive for the private sector to develop more energy sources. Contrary to flowery speeches by politicians and environmentalists who want to end our relationship with oil and instead conserve and use “renewable resources”, people have been working on just that for a long, long time. Billions of dollars are being spent on the search for an oil replacement. But depending on that research to replace oil anytime soon presents a few problems:

1.  The reason an alternative energy source has not gone into full replacement production is that they are all either too expensive or woefully inefficient.

2.  Even if an alternative source is found, it will take many billions of dollars and many years to establish an infrastructure to distribute the alternative. Think of building all of the existing gas stations around the country overnight. It’s not going to happen.

3.  Many renewable resources have their own set of environmental problems. You will find all the usual suspects who cry for an alternative to oil also decrying the earth-ending impacts of each of the so-called alternatives:

Wind power kills birds, especially raptors. Environmental agencies and activists groups routinely oppose construction of windmills because of potential bird kills. They are also unsightly in the view of people who have to look at entire hillsides covered with windmills. Just ask Ted Kennedy and his family who oppose one windmill on Martha’s Vineyard because it’s ugly.

Hydro power means damming up streams to force water into turbines to create electricity. Every time an existing hydroelectric dam is up for its 50 year federal license renewal, a cabal of environmental groups come out of the woodwork to lobby for its denial. They want the dam to be removed so the stream can be returned to is natural state. Forget about building a new hydro dam.

Solar power requires many acres of photoelectric panels to capture the sun’s rays. Environmental groups oppose this because the panels shade the desert floor, affecting the natural habitat for the desert tortoise and sensitive desert plants. A solar plant also require significant support facilities and human activity that changes the land use from open space into an industrial purpose. Permitting such a facility takes many years and millions of dollars of mitigation or replacement habitat and management.

Using solar power on individual homes is not cost efficient. The solar panels that go on the roofs of homes are expensive, and they corrode easily. Maintenance costs can be prohibitive. It takes at least 10 years to make the investment back (given current energy rates), and they will likely need to be replaced by then.

Geothermal power can be used in areas where there are volcanic forces near the surface. Its overall contribution is very limited. It also has its detractors. Environmental groups oppose them because they require ancillary development in delicate areas, and they can deplete the water table, causing adjacent thermal fissures to go dry. Injection plants can also create instability in geohazardous areas typical of geothermal fields.

Nuclear energy has been extinct in recent decades due to a raft of Hollywood leftest movies acting out doomsday scenarios of the earth’s destruction should one melt down. Three Mile Island was the last straw. Even though no serious radiation leak occurred and it was an expensive accident to clean up, it was quickly contained and cleaned up. That’s because that was how it was designed. Accidents will happen. The test is what happens then? With Three Mile Island, no health hazard resulted. The Soviet Union on the other hand, that bastion of liberal, Marxist thought, totally destroyed a city for the next thousand years due to their incompetence. Marxism has little regard for the health of its workers, and there is no economic incentive to be the best. So we in the U.S. are to be held to their standards, and are not allowed to build any more plants.

Then there is the issue of storing nuclear waste generated by power plants. There is a perfectly fine, state-of-the-art facility to store nuclear waste in a safe and efficient manner in the Nevada Desert. Yucca Mountain is available, but unusable because liberals in congress will not allow it to be used. The Marxist majority leader of the Senate, who happens to be the Senator from Nevada, says, the Nevada desert will not be the dumping ground for the rest of the nation. He makes this statement irrespective of the fact that the “dump” is underground, safe, provides lots of jobs, provides the state with royalty revenue from other states that store their “product”, and is hundreds of miles from the nearest significant settlement. In other words, it’s in the middle of nowhere. Thanks, Senator.

There are other, boutique methods of energy development: ocean wave generators, various bio fuels, hydrogen fuel cells, advanced electrical storage, etc., but even the potential of any of these becoming mainstream is 20 to 30 years away, if ever.

So, this brings us back to oil. If there is a better energy source, I’d like to hear about it. Meanwhile, we need to drill here, now.

Now that the price of gasoline and transportation is going through the roof, the subject of achieving more energy independence is finally gaining traction in the news and blogs. That’s great. The biggest impediment to establishing a rational energy policy has been the lack of attention over the past several decades. It was just too cheap to bother with.

However, while the outrageous cost of filling up our fuel tanks is a major issue, there is another, far more important reason to work toward independence: National Security.

Think about it. Much of our crude oil comes from counties that hate us. Yet, for decades we have freely handed them a potent weapon as we become more and more dependent on their crude. And now they are using it.

Oil is not a dirty word. It is the lifeblood of our economy. True, it makes our cars run, but I’d bet most people do not realize how much of what they use everyday is also oil related. Besides running planes, trains, and automobiles to distribute everything we use, oil is the base material for many plastics. Is there anything today not made of plastic? Oil is the base material for synthetic clothing, fertilizer, pesticides, synthetic weapons grade material for national defense, industrial materials; the list is almost endless. Who needs a nuclear bomb when you can bring a powerful nation down without firing a shot?

We can see how much power these oil producing countries have on rapidly escalating prices. Our national economy is reeling over it. So what happens if this cabal decides to withhold oil from us altogether? It is easy to do. China and India will certainly buy what we would have bought. How do we grow food, process it, get it to the store, get it to our kitchens? Pretty soon the mantra “no blood for oil” will become “go to war for food”. A radical statement, and an overreaction? Maybe, but certainly not impossible given the radical zealots among our enemies.

A few examples of oil producing states include Saudi Arabia (the 9-11 hijackers), Syria, Yemen, Iran, Libya, Algeria, Indonesia, Russia, Venezuela (their president Hugo Chavez calls our president the devil), Mexico, Ecuador; the list goes on. Given how dependent we all are on oil, why would we allow the leaders of these nations to have such a hold on us?

We need to drill now on U.S. soil.