The Artic National Wildlife Refuge.

update: December 2005:

House Opens Way for Oil Drilling in Artic
- The Associated Press - Monday 19 December 2005

House lawmakers opened the way for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as one of their last acts of an all-night session Monday bringing their legislative year to a close.

The ANWR provision was attached to a major defense bill, forcing many opponents of oil and gas exploration in the barren northern Alaska range to vote for it. The bill, passed 308-106, also included money for hurricane relief and bird flu preventive measures.

The vote came at 5 a.m. as bleary-eyed legislators struggled to wrap up their work for the year. Democratic anger over the process was put aside briefly as lawmakers greeted Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who returned to vote after suffering a heart attack Thursday.

US to drill for oil in wildlife reserve The US Senate yesterday approved a decision to open up the oil-rich pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska, prompting a rise in oil prices to a record high of $56.46 a barrel. Opposition Democrats and ecologists described the decision as an irreversible tragedy. "Is it worth forever losing a national treasure, one of our last great wild places, for a six-month supply of oil 10 years from now?" asked Senator Joe Lieberman. Drilling is not expected to start on the northern Alaskan coastal plain until 2007 and would take 10 years to come on stream. While reserves are expected to yield about 10 billion barrels, the US uses about 20 million barrels each day. The US government expects $2.5 billion in revenue from oil leases and taxes over the next 10 years, with production peaking at one million barrels a day by 2025. However, opponents say the six-month supply will not guarantee energy security. The solution, they say, is not to drill for oil but to wean the energy-hungry country off the fuel. - (Guardian Service) Not in my backyard, not in my state, not in my seas. On 16 March the US Senate voted to allow oil companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. This was achieved by tagging the measure onto a vote on the federal budget. Even so, it was dose: 51 to 49. A single senator, Florida Republican Mel Martinez, swung the result by trading his vote in return for a five-year extension of a moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. President Bush was said to be delighted. Martinez has protected the sea off his state at the expense of a wilderness that is home to 200 species including polar bear, musk ox and caribou. "The US has declared that SUVs are more important than polar bears", commented Halifax Live, an online Canadian paper. Feedback New Scientist 02.04.05

update: 19 March 2003:

US SENATE votes down project for oil-drilling in Alaska refuge Washington, D.C. -- The US Senate narrowly voted against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, defeating the centrepiece of President Bush's energy policy. Democrats, a few moderate Republicans and environmental groups argued that the pristine wilderness should be left untouched in favour of stricter oil conservation measures and drilling elsewhere. The Senate voted 52 to 48 to reject drilling in ANWR. "Once again, wildlife has won over wildcatters" the National Wildlife Federation said. But, for how long .. ?

update: 19 April 2002:

SENATE SCORES GREAT VICTORY BY PROTECTING ARCTIC REFUGE Washington, D.C. -- In a big victory for America's environment, 54 Senators today rejected a proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Senate Democratic leadership prevailed in safeguarding this national treasure and native people who depend on it, despite heavy lobbying by the Bush administration and the oil industry. from Sierra Club DC

October 2001
Proposals to allow oil exploration in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) were recently defeated in the US congress, but for how long? The refuge is situated on the northern tip of Alaska at its border with Canada. What is at stake for the moment is not the whole refuge but a strip amounting to 1/12^th of its total area, the so-called 1002 Area, along the Artic Ocean. The rest of the refuge to the south is largely mountainous and unlikely to contain much in the way of petroleum.

ANWR =Artic National Wildlife Refuge
NPRA =National Petroleum Reserve Alaska
TAPS =Trans-Alaska Pipeline System
BBO =billion barrels of oil
TCFG =trillion cubic feet of gas

In 1998 the US Geological Survey (USGS) concluded an economic assesment of the potential of the 1002 Area as an oil producer. The following is taken from the report's summary.

.. this study estimates that the total quantity of technically recoverable oil in the 1002 area is 7.7 BBO (mean value), which is distributed among 10 plays. Most of the oil is estimated to occur in the western, undeformed part of the ANWR 1002 area, which is closest to existing infrastructure. Furthermore, the oil is expected to occur in a number of accumulations rather than a single large accumulation. Estimates of economically recoverable oil, expressed by probability curves, show increasing amounts of oil with increasing price. At prices less than $13 per barrel, no commercial oil is estimated, but at a price of $30 per barrel, between 3 and 10.4 billion barrels are estimated.

The mean value arrived at for recoverable oil is close to the current US annual consumption of approx. 7 BBO (which is 2.4 UK gallons per person, per day!). Given the long lead time for development,the protracted nature of the extraction and that demand is expected to grow by 33% over the next 20 years, the exploration of the ANWR will go nowhere near solving US dependence on imported oil. But as US production in the southern states and Alaska's north slope declines, as the Middle East looks more volatile, the presure to develope within the refuge must increase.

The size of the Artic Refuge at 19 million acres is interesting for those of us used to the patchwork of allotments known as SACs. The land area of the republic is approx. 17.3 million acres.

Back to News