The ANWR Drilling Debate

The United States is currently involved in a long argument in the United States Congress over passing legislation to start driling for oil in ANWR. The debate is really complicated and there are many issues involved. The first issue is how desperately does the United States need oil?�

The U.S. domestic oil accounts for close to 25% of oil and most of that amount comes from the oil drilling in Alaska on the Northern slope area. Drilling began in Alaska in 1974 and has continued over the last couple of decades. The problem is that domestic oil production has been decreasing slowly each year. In the 1980s oil production at its peak produced several million barrels a day. Now only 943,000 barrels of oil are being produced a day.�

In addition, the decrease in domestic oil has increased U.S. imports of oil from foreign markets as a result. This has also made the U.S. government spend more money on oil and has increased the national budget. Drilling in ANWR will produce several million barrels of oil that will greatly help domestic oil production.

In the U.S. House of Representative and Senate, a bill was barely passed by a vote of 51-49 in favor of the bill for drillnig for oil in the ANWR region. Opponents of the bill claimed that the only reason that the bill was passed was because the ANWR bill was used as anattachment for the national budget bill. If the bill wasn't passed then the government would have shut down because there wouldn't be a budget for the government.

The other major group that is against driling in ANWR are environmental groups. They are against the drilling because they fear that it will harm the environment and the caribou herds that live there. However the other side of the argument is that new Arctic technology called Footprint technology has decreased the time and amount of land that is used for the driling. According to Econometrics Inc.�the ANWR�drilling would use less than 1 percent of the total land area in Alaska and the ANWR region.�In addition, scientists point out that the caribou herds migrate to the North Slope region and they therefore would not be affected by the oil drilling. Also, people who favor the oil drilling point out that there are very few people who live in the ANWR region and it would not affect their life styles.�

Finally, according to the latest Alaskan polls, around 75% of the Alaskan people support the drilling. The governor of Alaska and the Alaskan senators also support drilling and think that it would be a huge boost to their economy. In Alaska, some areas don't even have electricity. In the year 2000, parts of Alaska first got plumbing and a sewer system. Most of Alaska is way behind the other states in terms of modern features and technology and the huge amount of money that would be raised from the oil drilling would go to Alaska. Other amounts of money that came from oil exports from the ANWR region would be distributed to the other states.