Bush Is Flogging ANWR Again...

... with the rise in gasoline prices, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is apparently back on the agenda. Some facts, courtesy of the Rocky Mountain Institute:

• The department of energy estimates there are approximately 10 billion barrels of oil under ANWR. This sounds like a lot, but in any other era, the small size of the field (combined with it's difficult climate and geography) would have made it unpalatable to oil developers. Only the high price of oil, combined with dwindling domestic oil supplies, makes the field even remotely favourable for development.
• Private analysis has shown that the amount of oil under ANWR is likely far less than the DOE estimates. The DOE is well known for over-estimating oil supplies.
• Pro-ANWR forces say that only a small percentage of ANWR would be effected. This is kind of like saying Hiroshima wasn't that bad, because it was only one bomb. The fragile ecological centre of ANWR is the coastal plain, and all estimates of drilling in ANWR agree the coast would be wrecked.
• Even if drilling began today, oil would not start leaving ANWR for at least another 10 years. Global oil supply is likely to have begun contracting by then, meaning that ANWR would only offest the general decline in supply by a tiny fraction. The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre predicts that global supply will contract by 2 million barrels a day by 2010, whereas a fully-operational ANWR would only produce somehwere between 300-500,000 barrels a day. Despite these facts, the Bush administrations policies are identical to those of the treasure-seeking Springfielders - "I know! We'll dig our way out! Dig up, stupid!"
  
• When it did start being shipped out of Alaska, there's nothing the US can do to guarantee that the oil would stay in the US. There's a world market in oil - Alaskan oil will probably end up going to China and Japan.
• Finally, incremental efficiency increases (not to mention more radical ones) could easily (and permanently) save more barrels of oil than ANWR would ever produce. If every car today were as efficient as a Prius, the US would save two or three dozen ANWR's worth of oil.

By the way, most of these reasons are also good reasons not to invest in Tar Sands oil.