WHY IN THE HELL AREN’T WE DRILLING IN ANWR?

Alaska Oil Drilling Delay Could Cost $3 Trillion, Lawmaker Says
By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – The top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee said legislation to delay the sale of land in Alaska for oil and gas exploration would hinder the U.S. economy.

In a letter to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) late Tuesday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) said he was “disappointed” by Markey’s efforts to block oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and more recently in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lease 193 along the Chukchi Sea.

Markey’s bill would delay the sale — currently scheduled for Feb. 6 — until after the Department of Interior makes a decision on whether to classify the polar bear as an endangered species. Lease 193 is a core part of the polar bear’s habitat.

“It’s a continuation of his longstanding opposition to developing domestic energy, not only in Alaska, but throughout many regions of the United States,” said Steve Hansen, Republican communications director for the House Natural Resources Committee.

“It’s bewildering when you consider the fact that we are continuing to import domestic energy and it’s harming our economy, and yet at the same time members of the Democratic leadership are saying they want to work on an economic stimulus program while Mr. Markey is doing everything he can to continue the downward spiral of the economic situation here by another attempt to stop domestic energy production,” he told Cybercast News Service.

According to the letter, “OCS lease sale 193 is estimated to contain 15 billion barrels of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, for a combined total of 27.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent. ANWR is estimated to hold another 10.4 billion barrels of oil, for a total of 38.2 billion barrels of oil.

“This would almost double the total United States proven reserves of oil,” it states. “Lease Sale 193 and ANWR represent nearly $3 trillion to the U.S. economy, if we choose to develop them.”

Young also noted in the letter that people in Markey’s home state of Massachusetts have been hit hard by rising energy prices, noting that former Rep. Joe Kennedy has been working with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to get oil from Citgo to help heat homes in the United States.

“ANWR and Lease Sale 193 contain 36,000 times as much energy as Citgo, Hugo Chavez and our former colleague are providing for the poor and displaced in America,” he said.

Hansen added that if oil exploration is blocked, it “means we have to go abroad to get this energy. Therefore, we lose U.S. jobs, our money is going abroad, [and] other governments are benefiting from this. It’s not an ideal situation where we’re sitting on vast untapped oil reserves. Yet the president of our country has to go to OPEC nations and ask them to help us with oil.”

But Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman for the majority staff of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said, “It’s not a great plan to try to drill our way to energy independence.

“Some are arguing that we basically have no choice, but to keep on drilling, drilling, drilling at any cost to keep feeding our addiction is just not the proper choice,” Burnham-Snyder said.

“Markey was the original House author and arguably the biggest proponent for the recent energy bill that raised fuel economy standards by 40 percent and increased the amount of renewable fuels we’re using grown here in America, not drilled and brought in from abroad,” he added.

Burnham-Snyder said the combination of stricter fuel standards and diverse energy sources will “save us twice the amount of oil that we currently import from the Persian Gulf.”

He also told Cybercast News Service that the letter “isn’t quite accurate.”
“Chairman Markey’s legislation wouldn’t actually prevent the Chukchi Sea lease sale or any oil and gas drilling from occurring,” Burnham-Snyder said.

“It would just simply ensure that the Interior Department would make a decision on how best to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act first and then conduct an oil and gas lease sale in that 30 million acres of the polar bear habitat – which was supposed to be the original order of how Interior was going to do things.”

Hansen added that this sale does not disregard environmental concerns. “Alaskans are the best caretakers of Alaska, we care about our wildlife and the impacts that any energy development has up there,” he said. “We have the highest environmental standards in the world up there.

“No energy production would go forth unless it could meet these very stringent environmental standards that not only the federal government has established, but the state of Alaska, the people of Alaska, and the people that live in the local communities have that are directly in the areas impacted by any energy production,” said Hansen.