CD...the same arguments were advanced to stop progress here 12 years ago...that oil would be coming on
line NOW if we had gone after it. Ditto with the refineries and nuke plants we SHOULD have been building...ditto with offshore drilling.
1. We NEED fossil
fuels now and will need them in the future.
2. We can get them in an environmentally friendly manner while we buy time for other technologies to develope and become competitive choices.
3. Our ENEMIES sell us oil today and use the $$ against us. Every US oil dollar is one THEY don't get. PLUS they have LOW environmental standards so it is better for the planet if WE get the oil.
4. Production of US oil means US jobs and tax revenues. ALASKANS want it by a 3/4 majority.
5. The wilderness will not be harmed.
6. We don't KNOW how much oil is REALLY there. All we have is the esimates. Check the original estimates on the bakken field vs. the current estimates now that techology exists to take advantage of it.
We've been stymied by environmentalists for 20 years from investing in our own country's oil and gas reserves and forced to burn coal instead of building clean nuke plants and stymied by NIMBY's and activists from building the refinery capacity we need. Now those chickens are home to roost and we're NOW being told that it will take too long to develop those things.
We are the only country in the world that acts like this. What is wrong with us?
ERPS...no...that is 15-30 years we can LEASE that right to an oil company so that we can USE the public resource. We get the lease money and the taxes on each barrel...they get to make an average 8% profit. How do you propose to use this public resource otherwise? Keep it in the ground? have the government do the drilling? Since it is public...do Alaskan citizens get a vote?