C. James Strutz wrote:
>>Drilling doesn't automatically equate with "ruining" areas. How many
> people ever
>>plan to visit that part of ANWR which has been proposed for limited
> drilling?
>
> Non Sequitur.

No, it is not.

> Pristine places can be ruined regardless of how many
> people visit.

I'm not denying that, James. I was making a rhetorical point that many of those
spewing romanitic notions about ANWR have absolutely no interest in it other
than keeping Halliburton and Exxon away.

> There are a number of issues about ANWR that many people don't
> generally know.

I agree.

> It's a huge national park but only a small remote area
> was designated for drilling by Congress in 1980. The location is a
> barron

Barren.

> tundra that is far away from the beautiful mountains that have
> been pictured in the news media. Modern drilling methods are far less
> obtrusive than many people think. They are able to drill outward at
> angles from one location instead of drilling in many places. And roads
> to and from drilling locations can be built on ice, which disappears
> when temperatures warm.

Correct.

> The down side is that nobody really knows how much oil lies under
> ANWR.

Which is really a non-issue until exploration is allowed. Nobody knew how much
oil would come from Spindletop. Nobody knew how much oil we could get out of the
Gulf of Mexico. You even have some oilfields in your state, which required
speculation and exploration before they proved productive.

> The most optimistic estimates, which may not be realized for
> another 10~15 years even if we started now,

The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. We have to take that step
someday.

> are around 1.5 million
> barrels of oil/day. Constrast that with the 20 million barrels of
> oil/day that is currently consumed by the U.S (of which, roughly 60%
> is imported).

Every drop counts, and it can be used as a price leverage against OPEC. Between
the US, Mexico, Canada, and South America (especially Venezuela, if their
political climate can stabilize), and possibly Russia, we can produce enough oil
to impact OPEC's dominance in pricing.

> Lastly, the biggest threat is not in drilling but in
> transporting the oil as evidenced by the well publicized tanker
> disasters that occurred off the coasts of Alaska and Spain.

Red herring. The Exxon Valdez spill was an anomaly -- terrible, but an anomaly.
Despite all the scare-mongering, the region's marine life is bouncing back quickly.

> It seems to me that with so much uncertainty about how much oil can be
> produced and safely transported,

Do you own a car? How does your ownership of a car benefit the environment given
all the "uncertainty" about production and transportation of crude?

> and with the small impact it would
> make on our foreign import dependence,

I think you minimize the impact. It's not a zero-sum in the effect it'll have on
prices. Every piece of legislation offered by the president and GOP members of
Congress has linked ANWR exploration to improving consumption standards. Add the
two together and you get an increase in domestic production and improvements in
efficiency. It's synergistic.

> it makes more sense to expand
> the development of other avenues of (renewable) energy production and
> conservation.

The two aren't mutually exclusive, nor should they be treated as such. Our
economy cannot grow with sustained high energy prices. Economic growth spurs the
innovations you want, and makes them affordable for the masses. That's an issue
you shouldn't discount because the market sure as hell won't.

I read a cost-benefit article in either Forbes or Business Week recently about
the next round of hybrid vehicles. Trendy liberals like you and technogeeks (not
sure if you're one who has to have the newest toys before everyone else) may
rush to pay the premium for owning one. The cost-benefit for the vast majority
of the auto market, though, is on the side of conventional gas engines. Some
hybrid vehicles have a price recapture period, under current gas prices, of
between 10-15 years over their conventional counterparts. The automakers are
fully aware of this and aren't going to manufacture enough hybrids to keep up
with demand; waiting lists for hybrid versions serve to ensure higher prices for
them, and dealers are able to sell them at a premium well above list price.