U Not Gonna Like This

That from Men's News Daily:

August 18, 2006
By John Lillpop

An inconvenient fact–America’s inability to free itself from dependence on oil from the Middle East is likely to go down as one of the greatest failures in U.S. political history. Even the most generous historian will find it difficult to justify our continued reliance on a region of the world that has been in constant turmoil for more than 50 years.

Given the political instability in the Middle East and the skyrocketing costs of oil, U.S. leaders should be working around the clock to make America truly energy independent.

Unfortunately, the Democrat Party is adamantly opposed to any measures that would increase the supply of this precious commodity.

Why is that the case?

Because environmental elitists like Al Gore have decided that average Americans should not drive automobiles. In Gore’s warped vision, the unwashed masses can damn well walk, skateboard, bike, hike, or preferably, not navigate at all. Except when headed to the polls to vote for Democrats, of course.

Mind you, “Limousine Liberals” like Gore, the Clintons, John Kerry, et al. will always have their SUVs, stretch limousines, private jets, and the like. It’s elitist, liberal arrogance gone mad!

In advancing their no-combustion engine agenda, liberals obviously exacerbate the energy crisis by toiling 24/7 to do the following:

* Obstruct all oil drilling

* Obstruct added refinery capacity via extreme environmental regulations

* Obstruct nuclear energy and other reasonable alternative energy sources

* Tax “windfall profits,” and implement other anti-business steps that stifle efforts to increase oil supply.

An earlier article from the Heritage Foundation:

New Politics

Objections to drilling in ANWR, mostly from environmentalists, have stymied efforts to open up the refuge ever since a 1980 change in federal law allowed for oil and gas exploration there. At the time, Alaskans were under the impression that production would start soon. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), who recently toured the remote North Alaska site, said that for “24 years I’ve argued to get Congress to keep its word to us.”

Over the last four years, the only holdup has been in the Senate. The most recent version of the Senate energy bill, which fell two votes shy of breaking a Democratic filibuster, did not even contain ANWR provisions. The Senate had voted 52-48 to keep ANWR out of the bill entirely.


This recent article from the Heritage Foundation:

Oil and gasoline prices remain high, and two wars raging in the Middle East could drive prices up further still. Yet Congress has failed to remove restrictions on oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). ANWR is America’s single largest untapped source of oil. A new bill, the American-Made Energy Freedom Act (H.R. 5890), would open it to energy production. Other provisions in the bill are problematic, particularly those that would use the billions in ANWR leasing and royalty revenues to fund alternative energy projects.

A Stalemate on ANWR
In times of high prices and turmoil in many oil-exporting nations, America should make good use of the oil available here at home. Indeed, both the House and Senate have supported opening ANWR many times before, but they have failed to do so in the same bill. The House has been more aggressive, repeatedly passing legislation opening up a portion of ANWR’s coastal plain to exploration and drilling. Each time, however, the Senate was unable to overcome filibusters to companion bills. In turn, the Senate successfully included ANWR provisions in budget legislation, a useful tactic because that legislation is not subject to a filibuster. However, the House has thus far failed to go along with this approach.

The frustrating bottom line is that ANWR oil is still off-limits.

and this from the ANWR Action Blog:

How much oil lies beneath the Coastal Plain of ANWR?

Not much according to radical environmentalists and their friends in Congress. They say it’s not worth opening 2000 acres of the nearly 20 million-acre refuge for “just six months worth of oil.” “It would only be a drop in the bucket,” they say.

Well, fiction can be fun, but I prefer the reference section – especially when discussing our nation’s energy policy and growing dependence on foreign oil.

ANWR opponents’ claims about ANWR oil are shamelessly contrived. They deliberately ignore the abundance of scientific evidence developed over the years to support the presence of vast reserves, and play with statistics from the U.S. Geological Survey’s 1998 ANWR study until they arrive at a useful number. ANWR opponents then state their “findings” on record in debates in the House and Senate, blatantly misleading Americans into believing there is little oil in ANWR. In short, they butcher the objective science of math, ignore the rules of ethics, and ruin the integrity of any debate on ANWR.

Here’s a non-biased, mathematically sound and ethically produced analysis of the amount of American oil we can get from ANWR, followed by an updated assessment based on today’s oil prices and current recovery rates.

The following are mean estimates from the 1998 U.S. Geological Survey report, Potential Oil Production from the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

Oil in Place: 27.8 billion barrels

Technically Recoverable Oil: 10.32 billion barrels ** Assumes a recovery rate of 37%

Economically Recoverable Oil: 8.15 billion barrels **Assumes an average price of $30/barrel

So, given the mean estimates, and the assumptions of a 1990s recovery rate of 37% and an average price of $30 per barrel, the amount of oil that could be both technically and economically produced is 8.15 billion barrels.

Common sense dictates that at today’s prices of $70 per barrel, every last drop of the 10.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil could be economically recovered.

But don’t take it from me, take it from the Chief Economist at the American Petroleum Institute, John C. Felmy: “If you look at the geological survey, they say there’s 10 billion barrels as a mean estimate…. Recovery of that, at today’s prices is probably going to be 100 percent… That makes it the second largest deposit we’ve ever had in this country,” capable of producing about 1 million barrels per day over at least 30 years

and the ever popular energy alternatives always promoted by liberals:

Safe production on just 2000 acres of ANWR, 0.01 percent of the area, will yield more than 1 million barrels of oil a day for nearly 30 years.

• To get the equivalent amount of energy from wind, we would need a 3.7 million acre wind farm (that’s the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined) AND gale-force winds 365 days a year, every year, for more than 30 years.

• To get the equivalent amount of energy from solar power, we would need a 448,000 acre solar panel expanse AND beach-worthy, sun-shiny days 365 days a year, every year, for 30 years. (Paul K. Driessen, Atlas Economic Research Foundation)

So there you have it. The REAL FACTS behind ANWR and the current oil crisis.