ANWAR
April 30th, 2008 |Drilling in ANWAR is not going to make any difference in gas prices.
"President Bush’s claim ignores the primary causes behind record high oil prices: a cheap dollar, high demand from China and India, and speculators driving the price up. Drilling and sullying the Arctic would not address any of these causes of high oil prices."
If and when ANWAR comes fully online it would reduce our dependence on "foreign" oil by a whopping 2%.
Additionally, our "friends" the Saudis will just reduce production in order to keep the prices high.
There is one way out of this problem, just use less damn gas.
8 Responses to “ANWAR”
If and when ANWAR comes fully online it would reduce our dependence on “foreign” oil by a whopping 2%.
Estimates put the necessary time-frame for infrastructure development, pipelines and the like at 20 years out. There’s nothing near-term about that.
Wait a second here; whose estimates are you using, and from when?
What I’ve seen is that the estimates of ANWR recoverable oil depend highly on the price; USGS data more or less have calculated “how much is available at the prevailing price?” So you can get the reports to say just about anything you want depending on what time frame/prevailing price you use.
Besides, you’re more or less assuming that a shift in the supply curve will have no effect on the market clearing price. Sorry, but that’s not what is taught in Econ 101, fella. Granted, using less will impact the price, too, but even a 2% increas in supply at a given price will not fail to impact the price you pay at the pump.
The whole ANWAR debate is just juvenile. It’s like the proponents are this bratty child threatening to destroy their sibling Eviro’s favorite toy to keep them in line on other issues. “You vote with me that we’re going to Krusty Burger or Mister Fuzzywuzzy gets it”. It’s just retarded.
Sure there’s oil in ANWAR. And for the sake of argument let’s say it’s a lot, three times the most optimistic estimate. Is it still a good idea?
Environmental concerns aside, the current Alaskan pipeline really sucks. It was built in the seventies and is leaky, unreliable and prone to frequent shutdowns. The infrastructure needs a lot of investment to make good business sense.
And then of course there is the political problems with piping oil out of ANWAR across Canada. We have treaties with the Canadians and the Gwitchins that we won’t tap ANWAR. It’s a huge political can of worms. We’d have to ship it since we would probably not be allowed to use the crappy pipeline any how.
Morally, it’s a huge gamble. When the environmentalist cried wolf that the Alaskan pipeline would destroy the caribou herd they sort of had to eat crow when the reality turned out that the Caribou liked the pipeline and followed it in their migration. ANWAR is a different story. Here we’re talking birthing grounds not migration routes. We’re talking about busy drilling platforms not isolated pipes. It is very likely drilling ANWAR would result in extinction of the caribou herd the Gwitchin have relied on for over ten thousand years. This means basically genocide.
So what are the alternatives? How about Alberta? US oil companies bought up the rights to those fields back in the nineties when gas was under a buck a gallon so it’s basically not foreign oil. There’s a great pipe straight to Chicago. In fact, most of the Midwest is reliant on Canadian oil, not Middle Eastern. Additionally there’s some staggeringly huge finds in the Gulf of Mexico (even compared to that wildly optimistic ANWAR est.) that are coming online as well as the even larger fields off of the Newfie shores.
There’s a lot of oil. The trick is straightening out the markets. Lehman brothers has already called the end of the oil bubble and is retreating its positions. They could be right. A little over year ago nobody would say that housing prices would fall, are the oil bugs just as wrong today?
As a former ND resident, I welcome our new oil-barron overloards…
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-ne ws2.13s.html
And as a product of the ND education system, I obviously need a spell-checker…
Wait a second here; whose estimates are you using, and from when?
Heard it on the news last night, dood; sorry, don’t recall the program.
But fair enough, I’ll concede that numbers can be skewed and besides estimates are estimates. OK.
Still, how long do you imagine it’d take to do all the exploring, drilling, pipe-laying (no pun intended), etc.? How soon do you think the content of these reserves will materialize in the gas tank of your car? Not likely tomorrow, not likely this summer, and not likely within the next few years.
Another lesson, by the way, taught in Econ 101 is the difference between micro and macro economics. I’m assuming you support — or at least don’t mind — drilling up there. So, I challenge you to use those skills and consider the big picture: the oil we dig out of ANWR ain’t going to last forever. What next? I’ve yet to hear proponents of ANWR drilling speak to that point. We end up back at square 1. Does that mean ANWR could be just another “fix?” Just one more hit so we can make it to tomorrow? We’re acting like junkies. If we’re so awesome with our America-can-accomplish-anything attitude, why don’t we pony up and choose responsibility over convenience? Courage over fear?
Actually, generally macro starts with “102″ or some other number representing a second course. Most mortals can’t comprehend both in the same semester.
That said, my take is that beyond ensuring basic environmental protections and such, it’s not government’s job to plan out the usage of this resource any more than it is their job to consider what happens when your current bicycle or water heater wears out. The reality of the matter is that when government tries to do this, it inevitably mis-allocates the usage of the resource.
They need to ensure environmental protection (apart from Exxon Valdez, by the wam, leakage from the pipeline amounts to no more than a small pond), determine a reasonable royalty (% of wholesale value of crude would be just fine), and see if anyone will take them up on it.
Yup, it’ll take a while to come on line in full production, but I’d much rather pay Alaskans and even DC for the oil than paying the Wahhabis and the House of Saud. Wouldn’t you?
I’d much rather pay Alaskans and even DC for the oil than paying the Wahhabis and the House of Saud. Wouldn’t you?
In fact, I would not. I don’t differentiate between foreign and domestic oil-barons. Frankly, I believe this is a subject about which the US public has been duped — some of us have been led to believe that so long as the cheddar stays with “American” companies, it’s somehow patriotic and betters the lot of America as a whole. Rather, In either case, the profit and the money does not end up in DC in the coffers of the American taxpayers, nor would it end up (in this case) in the hands of Alaskans. I think it’s naive to assume that either would happen. It’s a select few who would profit.
And sure, it could be a comparatively “clean” exploration, etc. But that’s also not the point. ANWR drilling is like taping a band-aid to a severed artery — it’s not an appropriate fix.