Senators Clinton and Obama, did you both sleep through Economics 101? The only way to reduce gas prices is to reduce demand? No, no, no! The best way to drive the price of gas down is to increase SUPPLY! Neither of your answers addressed our need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Why is it that the last oil refinery in the United States was built in 1976? And why don't we find newer and better oil and gas resources here in our own country?
The United States consumes 20 million barrels of oil a day. The demand for oil will not be going down anytime soon. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is known to contain huge oil and gas deposits, but because of environmental lock-up restrictions on oil production on America's offshore Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), we have to import 65% of our oil from foreign sources.
More than 75% of Alaskans favor exploration and production in ANWR, so why not more support from the pinheads in Washington, D.C.?
Only 8% (1.5 million acres) of the northern coast of ANWR is being considered for research & development, and the remaining 92% (17.5 million acres) of ANWR will remain permanently closed to any kind of development. If oil is discovered, then less than 2000 acres of the over 1.5 million acres of the Coastal Plain would be affected. That's less than half of one percent of ANWR that would be affected by production activity. How much is 2000 acres? To put this in perspective, nearly 370,000 total acres were burned in San Diego wildfires last fall, and back in 2003, over 700,000 acres were burned in California alone.
Conservative estimates indicate that ANWR's 10-02 Area contains the equivalent of over 30 years worth of Saudi oil.
If the Washington beaurocrats are serious about ending our dependence on foreign oil, then they need to allow R&D to begin in ANWR. It's time to use the resources in our own country. Why buy something from other countries that we possess ourselves?
Reducing demand is not the answer.
Growing more corn for ethanol is not the answer.
Hybrid cars are not the answer.
The ANsWeR is ANWR.
