usual suspect > wrote:
>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.

Actually, it probably is, because there are far worse threats
than those resulting from the numbers of people involved.

>> 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.

Why should anyone have a particular interest in letting
Halliburton or Exxon in? I don't own stock in those companies,
and have no interest in how much money they make. I don't see
their bottom line as a national priority, nor as something we
would, as a country, want to trade for the value of ANWR as a
wildlife refuge.

Why would *anyone* want to do that? (Unless they are being paid
by one of those companies?)

>> 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.

And, of course it is *not* "barren". ANWR's coastal plain is
a botanist's delight (not to mention that biologists also love
the place).

>> tundra that is far away from the beautiful mountains that have
>> been pictured in the news media. Modern drilling methods are far less

That is bullshit. Show me a picture from the news media
claiming to be in the 1002 Area of ANWR that you think is *not*.
I'll be glad to verify for you whether it is, or isn't.

Here's a rather nice picture that more or less blows that claim
out of the water. This was taken from Kaktovik, on Barter
Island in the Beafort Sea, on the northern edge of ANWR. Note
that the mountains are *damned* close (15 miles away to be
exact), and that the tundra is far from "barren". (Be warned,
this is a 3306x2174 pixel image. You might want to save it to a
file and adjust the size with a program other than your web
browser for best results.)

http://www.federationofwesternoutdoo...ain___ritz.jpg

*That* is where they want to plant oil rigs, roads, dumps, airports,
gravel pits and pipelines. (Actually, right in the center, and to
the right side going out of the image is where current forecasts indicate
oil will be found.)


>> obtrusive than many people think. They are able to drill outward at
>> angles from one location instead of drilling in many places. And roads

That doesn't really have a great deal of import in this case. The
oil in ANWR is expected to be in many small pools, not in a few
large pools. That means that while each drill rig can reach out 30
miles or so, there won't be any oil there...

>> to and from drilling locations can be built on ice, which disappears
>> when temperatures warm.
>
>Correct.

False. There isn't enough water in all of ANWR to build more than
about 10 miles of ice road. Moreover, in recent years the amount of
time during which an ice road would be useful has fallen to less than
60 days out of each winter.

To put it mildly, ice roads are not an option in ANWR.

>> 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.

Well, I wouldn't agree with either of you. Anyone who expects
either another Prudhoe Bay or nothing, either one, is just dreaming.
The USGS survey is suggesting 5.2 billion barrels is likely. It
could be half that (a disaster) or twice that (a real bounty).
Betting on 5.2 billion barrels is probably pretty safe.

>> 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

Ha ha ha. That's pretty funny! (All of Prudhoe Bay only produced
2 million bbls a day at it's peak in 1988. Last month it was right
at 1 million bbls a day.)

The peak, if we got lucky, might be 500,000 barrels a day.

>> 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

As a price lever, forget it. It is estimated that at best ANWR
might affect the world market price of a barrel of oil by about
50 nents, *max*. You might see 2 cents a gallon difference in
the price of gasoline. And that is assuming there is far more
than any 5.2 billion barrels in ANWR.

>(especially Venezuela, if their political climate can
>stabilize), and possibly Russia, we can produce enough oil to
>impact OPEC's dominance in pricing.

We don't have enough reserves to make more than a very very
small dent.

>> 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.

I'll buy the anomaly, but you can't kid anyone that Prince
William Sound is "bouncing back quickly". It's been 15 years,
and its still far from recovered. Where's the bounce in that?

However, far worse than the feared anomalies, is what the mere
exploration and production infrastructure in ANWR would do to
the Porcupine Caribou Herd, and the collateral damage that would
have on the Gwich'in people in Canada and Alaska.

Do a web search on two names, Ken Whitten and Ray Cameron, to
learn more about that. They were, respectively, the head
biologists for studies on North Slope caribou done by the US
Fish and Wildlife Service (ANWR) and the Alaska Department of
Fish and Game (Prudhoe Bay). They are both *adamantly* against
exploration or drilling in ANWR. Moreover, so is *every*
biologist that has actually done field research on the North
Slope (meaning that in the past ten years that I've had an
interest in this topic, I have yet to see one single biologist
who actually did field work on the North Slope that has claimed
it would not be a disaster to drill ANWR).

>> 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 looks to me like it is exactly the opposite. People who
think we can just drill more oil wells to solve the problem
won't put time, money or effort into anything else. (I'll grant
that I haven't researched that well at all, and might be totally
off base. That is my impression, however.)

>> 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.

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)