ANWR

So, I have this brother, who has this blog on his Myspace page, on which a friend of his left a comment about America needing to drill in Alaska. FINALLY! The voice of reason seems to be prevailing on this issue! Nearly everyone that I have talked to in the last few weeks has agreed that we need to open ANWR. I recently had to do a paper for school and I chose ANWR as my subject, so I thought I would share all of my valuable knowledge with you all.

America's current top producing oil field is Prudhoe Bay oil field, on the North Slope in Alaska. The oil field is roughly 5,000 acres, and contained around 25 billion barrels of oil when it was first discovered. Prudhoe Bay currently provides the United States with an estimated 16% of its oil supply. It was estimated in December 2005 that there were only three million barrels remaining, which would be only ten more years of production. Because Prudhoe Bay is more than double the size of the next largest oil field in the United States, the East Texas Oil field, there is no denying that Texas will not be able to match the production that we will lose from Prudhoe Bay.

ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) consists of twenty million acres in Alaska's North Slope. Of the twenty million acres, eight million acres have been designated as Wilderness Area. An area of ten and a half million acres was intended to stay as it is in its natural condition. In 1980, Congress set aside one and a half million acres of land in Alaska, known as Section 1002. Section 1002 was designated SPECIFICALLY for potential future exploration and development of oil and gas, especially petroleum, and is a mere eight percent of the entire ANWR area. It is considered to be America's best chance at discovering another major oil field, one that could potentially produce as much oil as Prudhoe Bay.

I have visited Prudhoe Bay, and I have seen for myself the great care that is taken to ensure the safety of animals and environment alike. As a matter of fact, a once diminished herd of Arctic Caribou has grown from 3000 animals to 32,000 animals. There are also other species of animals that grow and thrive, all while sharing this coastal plain with oil explorers. The men and women who work out on the North Slope treat their environment reverently, and have great respect both for the Tundra and its wildlife, and for the work that they are doing there.

I believe that we should open ANWR, and I believe that we need to do it now. We have not opened a new refinery in the United States since 1976. We desperately need to start producing our own oil, and ANWR is the best place to start, moving into the Gulf of Mexico directly after. I urge you to write to your Congress representative and demand that they vote to open ANWR for drilling.

Please, please educate yourself on this issue, and issues about other alternative fuels. The best way to help guide our politicians is by learning for ourselves what the positives and negatives are and making informed decisions.