and that:
"the roughly 10 billion barrels of oil expected to be found there would be
the equivalent of JUST SIX MONTHS OF U.S. CONSUMPTION"
http://www.sacbee.com/news/special/power/032001abraham.html
Vince
...but given that we produce something like ~40% of our oil DOMESTICALLY,
and the majority of the remainder comes from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela,
we wouldn't need to replace 100% of our oil consumption with oil from the
ANWR. When I was researching the issue back in spring of 2002, the figure
that I heard was that ANWR oil could COMPLETELY REPLACE middle-eastern
imports for a period of 30 years. Folks, in 30 years, we probably won't be
driving internal combustion powered vehicles, so it sounds good to me.
That being said, I have mixed feelings on drilling in the ANWR. It would be
5-12 years before any useful oil came from it, and I fully expect
alternatively fueled cars to be pretty popular by then. I think it is more
of a political thing ("See! We did something! Vote for me again!") than a
real measure to offset either high energy prices or reliance on unstable
regions.
Greg
