Senate to vote on allowing oil drilling in ANWR

Great Debates
1

The Senate is about to vote on a proposal to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska (http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/16/arctic.drilling.ap/index.html), so I guess it’s timely for us to debate it. I tend towards “yes” – I love the caribou, but gas is now over $2.00 a gallon where I live! :eek:

Issues for debate:

  1. How much damage would drilling do to ANWR’s ecosystem? To the larger ecosystem of Alaska?

  2. How much oil can we really get out of it? Will it really make a difference in gas prices, or make the U.S. any less dependent on imported oil?

  3. How should we weigh any tradeoff between 1 and 2? How much environmental damage can we justify in the name of cheaper gasoline or energy independence?

2

  1. If all the latest technologies were to be used to minimize the impact on the environment, the actual damage should be fairly minimal. For all the talk about how the drilling would take place at exactly the spot where the caribou herd breeds, herds have been moved to new locations in the past.

  2. Lots of different figures are available. Oil industry estimates say 10 billion barrels, the U.S. government has estimated less than 5 billion barrels, and independant groups have come up with estimates even lower than that. It should also be noted that the amount of oil that could be recovered is almost certainly quite a bit less than the amount that’s in the ground.

Now I oppose it for four reasons:

  1. Although improved technology has reduced the environmental impact of drilling, I’d be nervous about the use of such technology. Oil companies have been slipshod about safety in the past, leading to spills in environmentally sensitive areas. And I don’t exactly trust this administration to strictly enforce whatever rules are created to protect the environment.

  2. The ‘drop in the bucket’ aspect. American cars alone consume 4 billion barrels a year. By the government’s estimate, it’s slightly over a year and then we’re right back where we started.

  3. If we opened the ANWR, OPEC could just drop production a little bit. Prices likely wouldn’t change at all. That’s the strategy OPEC has used in the past.

  4. If we want cheaper oil, we could just increase efficiency requirements. Let’s face it. We can’t keep guzzling gas forever. For economic reasons, for foreign policy reasons, for environmental reasons. Looking for new oil fields is simply the wrong philosophy to take at this point.

3

IIRC, even if the government goes ahead with drilling in ANWR (which, let’s admit it, is practically a “gimmie” at this point), it’d take several years to get the pipeline and roads and infrastructure in place before any drilling can begin, much less oil delivered.

4

These facts are brought to you courtesy of the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1002 Area, Petroleum Assessment, 1998, Including Economic Analysis U.S. Geology Survey Fact Sheet 0028-01
An important fact about this USGS study is about the data it comes from. To wit-

quote:“Collection of seismic data within ANWR requires an act of Congress, and these are the only seismic data ever collected within the 1002 area.”

So ALL available estimates are either based on these data, superceded by these data or made up. Most estimates are based on this USGS report.

quote:“This was a comprehensive study by a team of USGS scientists in collaboration on technical issues (but not the assessment) with colleagues in other agencies and universities.
The study incorporated all available public data and included new field and analytic work as well as the reevaluation of all previous work.”

Here are a few definitions that are worth noting.

In-place resources—The amount of petroleum contained in accumulations of at least 50 MMBO, (million barrels of oil), without regard to recoverability.
Technically recoverable resources—Volume of petroleum representing that proportion of assessed in-place resources that may be recoverable using current recovery technology without regard to cost.
Economically recoverable resources—That part of the technically recoverable resource for which the costs of discovery, development, and production, including a return to capital, can be recovered at a given well-head price.

As to technically recoverable oil “this study estimates that the total quantity of technically recoverable oil in the 1002 area is 7.7 BBO (mean value),” and economically recoverable resources-”at a price of $30 per barrel, between 3 and 10.4 billion barrels are estimated”

quote:
For further information and to request a CD-ROM (USGS Open-File Report 98-34)
containing detailed results and supporting scientific documentation, send e-mail to:
gd-anwr@usgs.gov
or contact:
Kenneth J. Bird (kbird@usgs.gov) (650) 329-4907
David W. Houseknecht (dhouse@usgs.gov) (703) 648-6466

The people at ANWR.orgbring up the point that extraction methods have gotten and will probably continue to get more effective and more efficient. They use these premises to make the case for the USGS mean numbers for both the technically recoverable and economically recoverable to be low-ball estimates.
The site also offers some statistics about technological advances at Prudhoe Bay. They don’t mention recalculating the economically recoverable estimate with an adjustment for the change of the real value of the dollar versus inflation. If they had done so, I suspect that they would have made a point of mentioning it. Therefore, while I suspect that their upward revisions of the estimates of the technically recoverable oil are warranted, I’m not as sure about the necessity of an upward revision of the economicall recoverable oil.

The economically recoverable numbers are the most relevant because they are the ones most indicative of the the amount of oil that actually will be extracted for human consumption.

The ANWR.org site suggests that 18 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil is an estimate that better reflects changes in current technology.

We used 7.2 billion barrels of oil in 2000, (19.7 million barrels of petroleum/day x 365 days/year => 7190 million ) according to US Dept. of Energy.
This rate of consumption is expected to continue to rise.
18 billion barrels divided by 7.2 billion barrels yields a supply that will last about two and
one half years at levels of consumption equal to our use in 2000. Of course as our
consumption rates increase, the ANWR supply wil decrease more quickly.
It’s estimated by ANWR.org myth-buster flyer that it will take 7 - 10 years or more “before the first oil reached American consumers”. The same source also says that the rate of extraction of ANWR oil is set by the maximum capacity of TAPS, (Trans-Alaska Pipeline System), at a mere 2 million barrels a day. The oil from Prudhoe Bay uses this same pipeline so the amount of oil that actally could be moved daily from the ANWR would be less than these 2 million a day-(maybe 1 million a day?).

After ten years of developing the ANWR, say 2014, we could get enough oil from it each day to supply a little over an hours worth of our usage at 2000’s levels.

In addition to the initial ten years to develop the ANWR sites, and using an estimate of 2 million barrels a day, (the ENTIRE capacity of TAPS), coming from the ANWR it would take a total of about 35 years to extract about 2 years worth of oil. (If only half of TAPS capacity is used it could take up to sixty years.)

Estimates are that by 2020 we will be using 26.7 million barrels of petroleum per day. Come 2020, ANWR will have been producing for six years and be able to supply almost a whole hour(!) worth of our daily petroleum use.

5

Is a the drilling a better option than decreasing usage by 5%?

Seem to far fewer risks asscoiated with decreasing usage.

6

Some, possibly more.

Depends on how much we’re willing to spend. If we keep th egas prices at or above $2.00 a gallon, we can get more out than if we let the gas prices fall. Kind of a catch twenty two for you, huh?

Probably not either one of those things. A five percent drop in gas prices from five percent more oil being made available each day (prob’ly a huge overestimate in price drop) would make $2/gal gas $1.90/gal gas.
Our periodic importation of foreign oil would only be 95% of what it otherwise would be.

Since there’ll be relatively little cheaper gasolineor energy independence, I’d say even less than relatively little enviromental damage.

However, if you’re one of the companies doing the exploration, there’re soem hefty profits that can be made. And, since artificial persons have more influence in our government than real persons, it’s likely that this will see serious debate it doesn’t warrant.

Just as articficial persons do not have the right to vote, they should also be prohibited from lobbying our legislators.

7

Actually, according to the NY Times (http://home.earthlink.net/~cevent/2-20-05_big_oil_sidesteps_arctic_drilling.html – I tried getting it from the Times website, but it looks like you have to pay for archives there, so this website will have to do) oil companies aren’t really all that excited about the profit potential of ANWR.

That’s funny, when I workedo on the Hill I can’t remember any artificial people lobbying me. They were all flesh and blood as far as I recall.

You can’t ban someone from exercising his or her free speech rights with a member of Congress or his/her staff. That’s completely unconstitutional.

8

That may be. But if no one’s going to make money on the deal, who wants it done? Are oil companies supposed to do it as an act a community service?

You’re pretty funny too. As we both know artificial persons who lobby employ the services of flesh and blood persons.

As I said, just as artificial persons don’t enjoy the right to vote (despite the fourteenth ammendment) I don’t think that artificial persons should enjoy the same ability to lobby our legislatures as real persons.

I see no reason to extend all of the exact same rights that real persons have re US governance to artificial persons. Already, artificial persons lack such rights, namely the right to vote.

9

Just an update: the Senate voted 51-49 to keep ANWR drilling in the budget.

Last year Congress was unable to pass a budget. That could well happen this year too. That’s probably the best hope of preventing drilling in the ANWR. If no budget, then ANWR drilling proponents would need 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster.

10

This is being sold as a way to reduce oil prices. I don’t think it will. I think this is actually a way to send more contracts to the current administration’s friends and also lets congress pretend to be doing something about high gas prices to appease their constituents while gaining points with the administration.

The estimates of what can be gotten from this seem so small compared to current demand it almost makes me think that this is just being done to spite those who want to preserve wilderness. I know that I have heard indiviuals gloatin over this like it is a way to show those treehuggers who is the boss.

11

In 7-10 years there may enough oil coming to supply up to 5% of our use.

12

I did not comment on how reasonable it was to believe that drilling in the ANWR would reduce oil prices. Many people thought that the war in Iraq would bring down oil prices too.

13

Or you can spin it another way -

SUV’s as a category use about 6% of the petroleum used in the United States. SUV’s as a class use about 22% more gas per mile than do cars. Therefore, the fact that Americans drive as many SUVs as they do adds about 1% to the overall petroleum consumption in the United States.

That means ANWR alone would make up the difference between SUVs and cars for 100-400 years.

See? Spin works both ways. The same environmentalists who argue that the ‘real problem’ in America is the love of big gas-guzzling SUVs turn around in the same breath and claim that the amount of oil in ANWR is trivial.

Also, the economic benefits should not be taken lightly. 18 billion barrels of oil at today’s prices is 90 billion dollars. Again, I could spin it that ANWR alone could pay almost half the cost of the Iraq war, and the same people who claim that the Iraq war was an economic disaster dismiss the economic value of ANWR.

Personally, I 'm ambivalent about ANWR drilling. Not on environmental grounds, because I think the danger to the environment has been greatly over-hyped. My main objection to drilling is that ANWR makes for a hell of a good strategic petroleum reserve, and it just might be a good idea to hang on to it for a few years. If there’s no real compelling reason to drill now, perhaps it’s best to just let it stay there until it’s really needed.

My main point is that there is a ton of spin around this issue from both sides. Drilling ANWR is not going to destroy the actic ecosystem, and it’s not going to eliminate or even markedly reduce America’s dependence on imported oil. It’s just a big resource sitting in the ground that some people want to harvest and others don’t. In the end, it’s not that big of a deal one way or the other.

14

I pretty much agree with **Sam **on this. I sure we can drill for oil and not ruin the environment. I’m also sure this will be a drop in the oil bucket and is largely symbolic. Might as well get set to drill, though, since it’ll take a few years to get this going, and who knows what things will be like then.

On a related note, I absolutely do NOT agree with the idea that keeps getting floated about tapping the strategic oil reserves. To the nuts promoting this: what is it about the word “strategic” that you don’t understand?

15

That would be “nuts in Congress”, ***not ***“nuts on this MB.” :slight_smile:

16

I’m mostly in agreement with Sam and John on this, except that I think they’re being a bit quick in dismissing environmental impact. As I understand it, this issue is this: the site is smack dab in the middle of the caribou calving grounds, and caribou simply won’t calve anywhere near any development. So drilling will inevitably alter the behaviour of 150k large animals. Now, I don’t know anywhere enough to say that this will have a substantial detrimental impact on things, but it does mean that various talk about how small the “footprint” will be, etc., is meaningless, since the impact doesn’t depend on the size of the footprint, but rather its location. Maybe the caribou would just move a couple hundred miles down the coast and it wouldn’t be a big deal, I don’t know, but herds that size have a major impact on how the ecosystem functions, and you can’t say with any certainty what the outcome would be.

Just remember, the “Law of Unintended Consequences” cuts both ways.

17

I don’t believe that is accurate. they’re already drilling on the edge of ANWAR. They will be moving this operation further in.

Personally, since we are the users of the product I think we should take responsibility for the extraction of it. All the better that it is our oil. I hope they drill on every scrap of land/water that is available. I also hope that bio diesel becomes more popular as well as a trend toward more fuel efficient cars.

18

Out of curiosity, where’d you get this number?

19

Disgusting. Drill one of America’s last pristine wildernesses to smack down the Greens. There are no winners, in practical terms. Why this makes some people happy I’ll never understand.

20

I used $50 as the price of oil. It’s actually at $55 today, and some analysts are saying it could go to $70.

The 18 billion figure is a WAG. Estimates on the amount of oil vary, and various numbers have been floated in this thread, with cites. But whatever. Call it half that if you want.