Should the United States drill in Anwar?

Lets use its real name. It is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That makes it a little bit more difficult to call for its pillage.

Would it produce oil? Yes. Would you see any decreases in gas prices anytime soon? No. Would you get much out of drilling there? No. Would the oil be more expensive than what is currently pulled out of the ground in Saudi Arabia? Yes.

It would be years before any of the oil would make it to the market. We should be pumping billions into finding alternatives. Not wiener moves to make it look like the politicians give a fuck. Why didn’t Bush do this when he had a majority on the hill? It is all political bullshit.

No. It will not help the lower the price of gas any time soon. It will take at least 8 to 14 years to bring any wells on line.

It will also not make us any more energy independent. Oil is bought and sold on a global market. The only thing it will do is add more oil to the global market place.

I agree with johnpowell, put the money used to explore the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into true renewable and sustainable energy sources. That investment would pay huge dividends by making us a leader in technological innovation again. By the government putting money into artificially keeping the price of gas low they are disrupting the market forces.

No, this is a red herring. An oil-covered red herring. No oil would be available for years. let’s use the monies instead to find alternative energy sources that are renewable and non-polluting.

The reality is that most alternative energy sources are as many years out as the timeline to bring any new wells on-line. Many hailed corn based ethanol as the great alternative energy source, but many scientists now agree that isn’t such a great idea. But both McCain and Obama support it, mainly to placate the farm lobby like any good pandering politician should. Most high volume non-corn based ethanols are at least a decade out if not more. The fact of the matter is that if gasoline gets much above $7.00/gal it will have a horrendous impact on the economy, decimating the car industry, airlines, etc. It will also raise the price of everything you buy, including food, since a large percentage of goods are trucked in America.

Even if tomorrow someone invented a super battery making electric cars more viable, then you face the problem of having to build hundreds of more power plants to charge them. So on what do you run all these new power plants? No one wants to burn more coal than we do already, and they don’t want to drill for more natural gas, and it would be prohibitively expensive to blanket the country with wind farms or solar panels, you are pretty much left with nuclear. As it stands, it takes years to get a nuclear power plant built, even if the political will existed.

A reasonable approach is to drill more domestically but keep gasoline prices high enough to make alternative energy economically viable so as to induce a softer landing for the economy. If we let gas get to $10.00/gal, the economy would be in such shambles that I guarantee anyone sitting in the White House would be gone and his replacement would be swept into office on a “drill now!” platform in a landslide. Hell, a recent poll shows the majority of Americans support more domestic drilling right now, at $7.00/gal they will be protesting in front of the White House!

Should we drill in Anwar? Yep, but there and for any other environmentally sensitive place, I would require the respective oil company to post an ginormous bond that would be forfeited should they fuck it up.

No, Oil companies in the past proved they can not be trusted. After Exxon spilled the oil last time, they were refusing to pay to clean it up. They settled for a small amount for the billions of money they already make. The environment still has not recovered completely from that accident. Gas is a problem but we got into this mess with 30 years of bad legislation with oil lobbies controlling Congress. We should have never over consumed more oil than we had. Most other countries do not have the oil resources we do and per person they consume significantly less oil than we do. Drilling for more oil is not going to solve anything in the short term or long term. Our public transit and train lines need to be modernized, communities have to be rebuilt to be more transit friendly and people need to consume less gas.

Drilling in environmentally sensitive areas is just as short sighted as a country full of gas guzzling SUV drivers who drive them for no other reason than status.

The sad reality is that this President has done nothing over the past 8 years to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, leaving us beholden to the skyrocketing prices — which are due in large part to the instability we have created in the Middle East. It’s a truly vicious circle.

Absolutely not. Even if they pay a huge fee beforehand and any fines after they screw up, you’re still letting them ruin something we will never be able to replace. Worse, it would all be to add only a tiny percentage to the available supply of an essentially obsolete commodity. Far better to invest in a new energy solution that has nothing to do with oil.

I’m all bout the enviornment but the USA and the rest of the world needs all the oil it can get

This question is 2 years old but it looks like the recent disaster in the Gulf have answered it.

@worriedguy The truly frightening thing is that much of Congress seems to be taking this as a “Look, it’s too dangerous to deep water drill, so Anwar is an obvious alternative” rather than seeing that the potential for disaster exists everywhere that we drill, including one of the most sensitive wilderness areas that exist.