| NORTH SLOPE, ALASKA -- Late last month, as we came in for a
gravel runway landing at this barren spot north of the Arctic circle, I
thought of an e-mail I had recently received from a liberal friend.
Attaching an article about Saudi Arabian corruption and ruthlessness, he
noted: "We should be really worried about the Saudis. Better to get off the
oil addiction, asap."
Boy, that's the truth -- but how? I'm all in favor of turning
off electric lights and conditioning ourselves to comfortable but not
refrigerated air. We should share rides when practical, telecommute when
possible and not buy behemoth vehicles when we don't need them -- although
we should remember that big families often need big cars.
Amid June snow flurries, I walked around the Arctic petroleum
facilities that I had seen from the air. I had envisioned seeing the trash
and debris typical of old-time oil fields, but here the tundra was clear.
The facilities up here actually display one of the environmental movement's
victories -- the new technology that has come in over the past decade in
response to ecological concerns allows oil workers to make only a very small
footprint in this vast land.
That technology also allows us to increase our domestic oil flow
with not much more environmental impact than spitting in a lake. All we have
to do is to open up for production a part of the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge that is just as desolate as the ground I walked upon last month. The
U.S. Geological Survey says there is a 95 percent probability that at least
6 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from Alaska's ANWR --and that
amount could readily go to 10 billion barrels. Others say16 billion barrels
is a reasonable figure.
You may have seen television network news portrayals of ANWR
this spring when the House of Representatives approved but the Senate voted
down a bill to open up a part of the refuge for production. The two-minute
propaganda reports showed beautiful lakes and hills, and those are present
in the southern part of ANWR -- but nobody's asking to drill there. The oil
deposits are at North Slope latitude, only 20 degrees short of the North
Pole.
With a House-Senate conference committee now meeting to debate
and perhaps reconcile the competing bills, I hope the assembled political
leaders look at the facts and not just the reactions of their constituents
and contributors. For example, drilling for oil way up north is not like
drilling for oil in Texas a generation ago. Up here, six-acre gravel
drilling pads are used to tap vast oil fields and are removed when drilling
is complete.
What is that tiny and temporary scar worth to us? Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham says that "average estimates" of ANWR's reserves
suggest there's enough there "to replace oil imports from the Persian Gulf
region for 10 years, or from Iraq for 50 years." It's true that it would
take a few years for ANWR oil to make such a difference, but if we don't
start now we won't be any better off down the road.
And what of the wildlife? First, ANWR use would affect no more
than 12,000 (some say 2,000) of the wildlife refuge's 19 million acres.
Second, look at the record: Some environmentalists predicted that the oil
pipeline would doom the Alaskan caribou, but caribou herds have increased
since its construction. The caribou appear to like the little ridge on which
the pipeline sits, because it helps them escape the real marauders of the
tundra: not men, mosquitoes.
During the 600-mile flight back to Anchorage, sitting in the
cockpit, I was able to get a different look at descending into a cloudbank
than is available from a passenger window. The clouds from in front looked
almost like a wall, but the pilot without hesitation flew right in, and
anyone who said the cloud was a wall would lose his license.
As the House-Senate conference committee meets, I hope senators
will not once again see clouds as barriers. We have two main options: Rely
on corrupt Saudi leaders, or dive into the cloud.
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