After all this time, don't forget to open up drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The U.S. currently imports 50% of its oil. We consume 18 million barrels of oil a day and the Energy Information Administration projects this to increase to over 25 million barrels a day in the next 20 years. Meanwhile our domestic production, for which Alaska counts for 6%, is in steady decline. Our current oil imports cost us $336 billion dollars a year, $922,072,320 per day, or $38 million dollars an hour. Every barrel of oil produced at home replaces one that needs to be bought from abroad decreasing our debt and the outflow of money from our treasury. Beneath the 1.5 million acres of the ANWR Coastal Plain are believed to be over 10 billion barrels of oil (mean average estimate). In today’s $50-60 price range that oil is worth over 520 billion dollars. At last years +100 dollar prices ANWR oil was worth over 1.3 Trillion dollars! At maximum production the USGS predicts ANWR oil could add 1,500,000 barrels a day saving us hundreds of millions of dollars each day in imports. There is little doubt America will consume oil for the next 50 years in ever increasing amounts. This will mean an ever greater drain on our economy. Oil imports are already the single largest source of our national debt. ANWR oil will save us billions of dollars over decades of production and bring jobs and steady economic prosperity to the nation. No other single source natural resource or industry could bring so much from so little effort and with absolutely no public expenditure.

Prudhoe Bay is the largest oil field in North America and is located just 50 miles from ANWR’s 10-02 border. Satellite fields of Prudhoe Bay lay just 2 -3 miles from the 10-02 Area itself and are currently being developed for gas and oil. All the fields at Prudhoe Bay have been feeding the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) for over 30 years now, transporting nearly 17 billion barrels of oil to American markets. Those fields however, are running low and TAPS is only 1/4rd full at just over 500,000 barrels per day. Despite tapping into smaller marginal fields around Prudhoe Bay this decline in production has not been stemmed. Without new sources of oil, the pipeline will eventually reach a “minimum threw-put” and its pumps will be unable to function. When this happens TAPS, by law, must be disassembled and removed, thus stranding all other Arctic oil supplies. The 10-02 represents the biggest and easiest fields to access to keep the oil flowing. Feeder pipelines already exist to within 2 miles of ANWR and all the gas and water separation facilities already exist at Prudhoe Bay so little infrastructure would be required. Because it is onshore, ANWR 10-02 oil is also far safer and less expensive to access than off shore oil. ANWR’s 10-02 Area also contains natural gas for which access to it has been factored into the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline’s (ANGP) economic feasibility study. Thus for both the TAPS and the up and coming ANGP, ANWR’s 10-02 is vital.

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It's time to rectify this failure, and to get the oil flowing amidst the caribou

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