Drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge

It is no surprise that with oil prices continuing to rise, we look for alternative options to gather this critical resource.  Some politicians would like to start drilling domestic oil in Alaskan Arctic National Refuge.  This part of Alaska is currently off limits to drilling but with oil supplies tight and would demand rising, the issue is open for debate.

This refuge was established in 1960 and occupies 19 million acres.  It is home to caribou polar bears, wolverines, arctic fox, and other animals.  It also has a variety of natural features which include tundra, mountains, glaciers, and rivers.  This area is commonly referred to as the last great untamed wilderness.  Drilling for oil here would cause extensive environmental damage and I think that is not worth the unknown amount of oil that may be there.  Even though we do not know the amount of oil reserves in Alaska it is widely acknowledged that there is not enough to make us independent and not have to rely on oil from other countries.  The US Department of Interior has estimated that there could be between 9-16 billion barrels of crude oil in the refuge.  This sounds like an abundant amount of oil in our grasp.  This can be deceiving though, because in the US we consume over 20 million barrels of oil per day and this amount continues to rise.  If you do the math this means that the US could be an independant provider of oil for 1-2 years.  Alaska is known for its scenery and wildlife.  Who wants to go see one of the most pristine places on Earth with an oil field in the middle of it?

I am not completely against drilling for oil domestically, but I do think that wildlife refuges and national parks are very important places to preserve.  People such as Theodore Roosevelt also found these places to be sacred and saw that human greed might someday destroy them so he made efforts to preserve them.  Opening the refuge to drilling would also take away the focus of meaningful solutions to our oil crisis such as conservation and alternative energy.  Opening it to drilling would only be a short term delay of the crisis while it would be a long term if not fatal fall of this environment.  If opened for drilling the refuge might help us for a few years with the oil crisis but after that we would be in the same situation as we are now if not worse.  I will be the first to admit that I don't know the answer to for our situation, but there has to be a better answer than this.


REFUGE- A place of shelter, protection, or safety.








 http://arctic.fws.gov/