Reactionaries Oppose ANWR Drilling

America's dependency on Arab oil is a security risk so obvious even Democrats recognize it. Yet they have just voted in lockstep to prevent drilling in what they themselves cleverly labeled the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to keep even a tiny fragment of it from being developed.

In fact, Alaska, whose population is just slightly greater than that of Washington, DC, is about four times the size of California and contains fully 60 percent of America’s official wilderness areas. ANWR, located on the northeastern side of the state, comprises roughly 19.5 million acres, an area about the size of South Carolina. Of this, the oil-drilling project would occupy only 2,000 acres, a patch of land about the size of Dulles Airport or just over one ten-thousandth the ANWR region.

Moreover, history shows that oil development and a thriving wildlife habitat can co-exist; the population of Central Arctic caribou that inhabit the areas surrounding the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil fields, for example, has increased by more than 20,000 since those oil fields were opened.