Maybe not if smart people like us (wink) see the rediculousness of it.

Let's make all the holes we can in the United States, to hell with the environment. Let's turn the country into one big Texas oil field and keep making the fat cats fatter. Why bother looking for other energy sources, clean energy options? The status quo has worked so well so far...

This is really a narrative that needs to be put to rest.

I don't have the information on hand, but I've heard some pretty pathetic evaluations of the ANWR oil reserve, i.e. it wouldn't last more than a few years, it's a fraction of the size of other oil reserves, etc.

Consider eyes rolled.

And consider affirmative action to mean all races, ages, people. The point? Affirmative. Action.

Hey 12,

There have been a lot of good stories on ANWR and so forth at The Oil Drum. For example:

The USGS published in 2005 a report (FS2005-3043) on the central part of Alaska - Central North Slope – putting undiscovered Oil and Natural Gas resources at 4 Gb and 37 Tcf. In addition to that there's the potential of 7.7 Gb and 4 Tcf for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) (FS2005-1217) and also at the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA). The KIC well drilled in 1985 in the ANWR is still confidential, despite the rule of becoming public after only a few years! All these estimates seem in disagreement with the creaming curve. But the USGS past approach since 2000 has been too optimistic, where only one geologist is simply guessing solely the number of discoveries and the size to be forecast (seventh approximation sheet) and then a Monte Carlo run (50 000 transforms) These wild guesses result into a beautiful distribution that looks real. A better approach should be hoped for, based on the complete past data reviewed by several geologists.

The closest developed field to ANWR is Badami, operated by BP, with an initial estimate of 120 Mb for 300 M$. It was abandoned in 2003 after 4 years of production, totalling 4 Mb with a peak of 3150 b/d in 1999, ten times less than expected! For the Mackenzie delta (FS2006-302) the USGS estimates undiscovered Oil at 10 Gb, Condensate at 4 Gb and Natural Gas at 87 Tcf.

(Emphasis added.)

I'm no petrochemist, but I think they present a compelling case that we can't produce our way out of our problems with oil. Conservation, greater efficiency, reducing waste, and coming up with new fuels is the way to go.

The new definiton of compassionate conservative is an oil man who sells vaseline cheap...