Underhanded route to Alaska oil

Until now, attempts by the oil industry and its congressional patrons to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling have been thwarted either by timely presidential veto or by filibuster.

But with a more sympathetic occupant in the White House, drilling proponents in the Senate are stooping to a back-door parliamentary maneuver, attaching their proposal to an unrelated budget resolution that under Senate rules cannot be filibustered.
And as always, drilling advocates are using distortions and half truths, claiming that awarding extractive leases on protected lands will significantly reduce the nation’s dependence on imported oil while having minimal impact on the region’s fragile ecology.

However, even under the most optimistic analysis, it could take up to a decade before ANWR produced the first drop of oil. And even at its projected production peak in 2025, ANWR might only reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil from about 68 percent to 64 percent, according to the government’s best estimate.

Altanta Journal-Constitution