Senate votes to begin drilling Alaskan oil

November 4, 2005 12:28 AM

By a 52-47 vote on S.1932 §401, the US Senate today directed the Department of the Interior to begin selling oil leases within four years in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), with the goal of raising $2.4 billion to lower the deficit and, tangentially, help pay for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Oil would not be available for another ten years, and according to a 2003 DOE report, opening the Alaska refuge to drilling would only reduce U.S. dependence on imported crude oil in 2025 from 70 percent to 66 percent. The House of Representatives decides next week on whether to keep the drilling measure in the bill.
posted by Rothko (56 comments total)

The idea of drilling in ANWR has the wisdom of an overweight diabetic eating the last 8 chocolate cake pieces at the buffet, just to succumb to his insulin shock. No offense to people who suffer from diabetes.
This is just shortsighted, narrow-minded greed.
PATHETIC!
posted by threehundredandsixty at 1:23 AM on November 4, 2005

hmmm...

"The provision in the budget bill assumed $2.5 billion in federal revenue from oil lease sales over the next five years. Alaska would get a like amount as well as half of future oil royalties from the refuge."

So Georgist! I approve! Really, I understand why we need to pay $2.50+ at the pump but I sorta think there's very little value-add these private exploration companies are giving us. Since it's *our* oil in the ground, I'd like to see more aggressive severance taxes. Surely there's some private concern willing to find $10/bbl profits on this extraction.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:32 AM on November 4, 2005

1 million bbl/day over 25 years isn't chickenfeed.

<img src="http://img484.imageshack.us/img484/8262/gasoline9av.png"
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:38 AM on November 4, 2005

It was only a matter of time. No-one can honestly believe this to be a good thing. I'll be very interested to see any arguments supporting this policy.
posted by twistedonion at 1:39 AM on November 4, 2005

posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:39 AM on November 4, 2005

What about all those oil drums I buy just to push over and look at the pretty colors? I don't see those in your graph, mister graphy mathy pants.
posted by TwelveTwo at 1:40 AM on November 4, 2005

Alaskan citizens already get annual oil-dividend money from the state, will this affect that?
posted by tweak at 1:41 AM on November 4, 2005

No-one can honestly believe this to be a good thing

I think it would be better to bleed the Sauds dry, but on the flipside, 10B bbl of product in the ground, @ $50/unit is $500B worth of goods. Monetizing it doesn't seem like a bad idea, I'm no Kunstler, I think we'll be able to transition off of oil successfully in the next 10-20 years.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:42 AM on November 4, 2005

I think we'll be able to transition off of oil successfully in the next 10-20 years.

So why bother drilling in Alaska again?

Your chart also makes no sense. The obvious solution is to stop consuming so much, not bleeding everywhere dry. It wouldn't be that hard you know - small sacrifices sometimes need to be made to make the future secure for the kids. Do we give a fuck about our kids though? no.
posted by twistedonion at 1:45 AM on November 4, 2005

"According to the Oil and Gas Journal, the United States had 21.9 billion barrels of proved oil reserves as of January 1, 2005"

vs.

"The United States consumed an average of about 20.4 million bbl/d of oil during the first ten months of 2004"

DOE Link

hmm, 21.9B / (20.4M*365) = x years of domestic supply to support our oil habit.

x being my favorite statistic. Can you guess it?

a) 3 years
b) 10 years
c) 30 years
d) 100 years
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:54 AM on November 4, 2005

None of the above?
posted by TwelveTwo at 2:00 AM on November 4, 2005

So why bother drilling in Alaska again?

Why not? I totally agree that conservation is the way to go, but the present powers-that-be have stated that the "american way of life is non-negotiable" and that is the political reality we must work with (the electorate was given the chance to reject this bedtime story BS, but ... chose ... poorly last year).

$500B worth of sludge is some serious product to bring to market. MSFT is presently selling their product at a $100M/day clip , so this 1M bbl/day outpu t@ $80-100/bbl market prices would be a similar-scale economic engine for our economy.

Not insignificant. The potential loss? A mosquito-ridden tundra scape in a god-forsaken corner of the world?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:01 AM on November 4, 2005

TwelveTwo: the answer is a)
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:02 AM on November 4, 2005

Alaskan citizens already get annual oil-dividend money from the state, will this affect that?

This would potentially double Alaska's production. What that means to the Alaska dividend (~$1000/winter AFAIK) is... dunno.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:06 AM on November 4, 2005

small sacrifices sometimes need to be made to make the future secure for the kids

That's obviously pinko socialist nonsense.
posted by uncle harold at 2:19 AM on November 4, 2005

Well done Heywood Mogroot. Three years. Not even three years. And not even of the total energy use.

What is in Alaska is a pittance. As a source of fuel, it's hardly worth drilling the holes in the ground.

But as a symbolic policital act of conservatives smacking down the environmentalist wacko left it will provide some valuable campaign rhetoric.
posted by three blind mice at 2:29 AM on November 4, 2005

The potential loss? A mosquito-ridden tundra scape in a god-forsaken corner of the world?

Well put, Heywood. Displays the kind of nuanced understanding of global ecology I'd expect from someone who thinks this is a reasonable plan.

When the dust finally settles on this lunatic age, it will be actions like this that define its extraordinary shortsightedness. An Escalade full of Alaskan oil - willful human ignorance in a nutshell with a spacious interior and cupholders to spare.

History will not be kind to these blind, greedy, megalomaniacal ideologues. Nor should it be.
posted by gompa at 2:46 AM on November 4, 2005

3bm, you're probably right. I'm trying my best to present the economic side of the argument, but the economics of $50bbl oil say we need to find another source of energy.

I was out of the country in the 1990s; did Clinton attempt to push this at all?

ah, google-fu is good:

CATO: Toll Road To Nowhere
"You can only special order the Prius, which is limited to 12,000 per year here. "

LOL. CATO assholes strike again.

TomPaine: Fool Cells

pretty good summary of Clinton's PNGV 8-year managed-research program I guess.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:49 AM on November 4, 2005

That's obviously pinko socialist nonsense.

obviously. I rather be pinko than an ignorant selfish bastard. me me me. That's the right wing mantra.

Funny how the right espouse family values and yet are happily tightening the noose around their kids necks.

We will not be thanked for the "achievements" of the Industrial Age. Not al all.
posted by twistedonion at 2:54 AM on November 4, 2005

that should be not at all.
posted by twistedonion at 2:55 AM on November 4, 2005

Actually, gompa put it more eloquently than me in his post a few up
posted by twistedonion at 2:57 AM on November 4, 2005

This is ridiculous. A tiny drop of oil, relative to current use, and "$2.4 billion to lower the deficit". Sure!

US budget deficit shrinks in 2005

Robust economic growth has boosted tax revenues
The US budget deficit shrank to $319bn (£180bn) last year as better economic conditions boosted tax revenues.

Despite falling from 2004's record $412bn figure, the federal deficit for the fiscal year ending last month was still the third highest on record.

Even Katrina repairs are going to be like $30 bil.

And the band played on.
posted by blacklite at 3:05 AM on November 4, 2005

What about those tar sands in Canada?
posted by PenDevil at 3:15 AM on November 4, 2005

The US budget deficit shrank to $319bn

Actually the operating deficit for FY05 came in at $550B, if you wish to insist on the fiction that people's FICA overpayments that are currently going into the general fund should be disbursed out of the general fund to SS recipients starting next decade.

I would argue that 1M bbl/day is not a tiny drop of oil, though. It is significant. Iraq peaked at 3M/day in 1988.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:17 AM on November 4, 2005

Good christ, Heywood, an op-ed by Pat Michaels? Was Lyndon Larouche unavailable for comment?

Or did you post it in jest?

On preview: PenDevil, those tar sands are being drilled as fast as humanly possible, probably to the permanent detriment of Alberta's natural environment. The boom's so big, in fact, that as a resident of the province reaping the benefits, I'll be receiving a $400 prosperity rebate from the provincial government in the next couple of months. Proving that greed and myopia is as global a phenomenon as climate change.
posted by gompa at 3:22 AM on November 4, 2005

Good post Rothko. Thanks. I was watching Lehrer (a great PBS show IMHO that we get daily in Oz) yesterday seeing an Inuit elder from the wilderness area saying that they were basically all for it. He was an unsophisticated fisherman and was pitted against an enthusiastic activist from Anchorage who spoke like a politician - not that she was bad or unconvincing or whatever, just that the contrast was a bit umm..cringe worthy. He and his people want money. It's not brain surgery.

And without wishing to particularly flail the administration on oil-slutting, environmental myopia and crony pandering, it's the whole long-term aggressive oil-dependent future as numero uno priority that I find most disturbing. If the legislative and rhetorical will was shifted a little more towards conservation, fuel efficient living and alternative energies then....things might be different.
posted by peacay at 3:27 AM on November 4, 2005

You know, it occurs to me that the bicycle should be a more popular mode of transportation. Its energy source doesn't need to be drilled out of the ground, it can be found in great quantity around the waist of most Americans.

Millions of Beijingers commute on a bike every day. If half of them drove cars, no one would get anywhere, ever, and the air would be unbreathable (moreso). China is "modernising" by trying to copy America's car-centric model of industrialisation; they are moving in the wrong direction. The west should be moving to emulate China.

Bikes aren't just for Critical Massholes. Why don't federal, state and local governments work to improve city air quality, reduce dependence on foreign oil, improve public health and reduce congestion on the roads? What is the downside of promoting cycling? I fail to see it.

Are American people so monumentally lazy that this could never work? One thing Chinese people often ask me is if Canadians and Americans are lazier than the Chinese. I don't want to say yes, but something tells me this is the case.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 3:29 AM on November 4, 2005

When an oil company put a pipeline through our property a few years ago, they accidently tore down the fence and all our horses got out. They left mounds of dirt so high the tractor couldn't get over it.

We had to fix both of those ourselves, because they never responded to our phone calls and never came back.

That's how they treat land that has people living on it. I don't think they will be any more gentle on land that only has animals.
posted by Jatayu das at 3:30 AM on November 4, 2005

What about those tar sands in Canada?

LOL. There's a *lot* of petro-gunk there, but it presently takes natural gas to productize it into fuel... natural gas is settling down toward $10/MBTU now (from peaking at $13), but if/when Canadian supply is diverted to produce oil from bitumen (via eg. steam-injection), we'll see natural gas prices go back up into the pain level for consumers (if $10/MBTU isn't painful enough -- as recently as 2002 the price was $3/MBTU).

"The Canadian Athabasca oil sands deposit has an estimated reserve production capacity of 750,000 barrels (150,000 m³) of crude oil per day using the current hot water processes."

so this Alaska thing is putatively a better solution, if they indeed find enough oil to pump at 1M bbl/day.

pdf stats on tar sand production

hmm, 2004 shows capital outlay of $6.2B, revenues of $14.9B on 1M bbl/day production ($41/bbl), severance tax of $700M paid to province. It's good to be a capitalist I see.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:39 AM on November 4, 2005

[Ex], I live about ten miles from town. True, I could do it, but good lord. My neighbors? Never.
posted by atchafalaya at 3:40 AM on November 4, 2005

an op-ed by Pat Michaels?

you'll note I called him an asshole, above. His Cato-paid screed has of course been proven total bunkum.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:41 AM on November 4, 2005

What is the downside of promoting cycling? I fail to see it.

I biked a lot in Tokyo, 1996-2000. Got into pretty good shape, but without showers at work or a gym/sento close by it's not a very doable proposition in the summer, and in the winter it's pretty tough staying out in the cold for 40 minutes.

Plus for people with families, there's the SUV "safety"/convenience thing. I often saw Japanese mothers with *2* kids on one bike going down the street. No helmets. Insane by modern parenting standards.

Then there's shopping. The Japanese way of life is to hit the neighborhood "supa" grocery daily and carry at most two bags home. Bit different from the US pattern of loading up a week's worth in one go.

I think biking to/fro mass transit for the commute into work has more promise in the states, maybe.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:50 AM on November 4, 2005

His Cato-paid screed has of course been proven total bunkum.

Okay. Thought I might have misunderstood. Still confused, though. If you know Michaels is full of shit, how do you miss the stench coming off the ANWR plan? Seeing as how, for example, the increase in oil supply from ANWR could be equalled - even surpassed - simply by raising fuel-efficiency standards in the US to levels already easily achieved by existing internal-combution engines?
posted by gompa at 3:51 AM on November 4, 2005

I have a great idea for drilling in ANWR: give exclusive control over lissences to Green Peace (and other enviromental activists), but obligate them to permit at least x barrels per year by 2015, and obligate them to return at least 50% of the profits to the national parks service. This would give the environmental activists all the leverage in the world to force cleaner extraction methods, and punish poorly behaived companies, but also force them to the table over ANWR. Of course, Green Peace & crew would get sticnking rich off the lisencing too, but $2.4 billion is chump changge to the federal government, and we would have reasonable & clean extraction & processing.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:59 AM on November 4, 2005

This report on tar sands has some data to ponder:

Syncrude required 1.35MBTU to produce 1 bbl of oil, currently giving an energy input cost of ~$15/bbl produced. At the $60/bbl market price the Canadians probably aren't sweating this too much, but who knows what the oil market's going to do next year.

The Canadians expect to use ~1.5Bcf of natural gas per day for in-situ steam recovery in 2015... total Canadian production of natural gas is ~5.8Tcf .... so tar sands would be using more than 10% of Canada's natural gas output for steam recovery.

This is an interesting industry article on tar sands that promises alternative methods that might reduce this heavy natural gas usage.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:11 AM on November 4, 2005

give exclusive control over lissences to Green Peace (and other enviromental activists)

You have got to be taking the piss, right?
posted by twistedonion at 4:12 AM on November 4, 2005

Seeing as how, for example, the increase in oil supply from ANWR could be equalled - even surpassed - simply by raising fuel-efficiency standards in the US

why can't we do both? Drilling $500B worth of oil out of Alaska appears more economically beneficial than buying $500B worth of oil from the Sauds over the next 30 years.

Even with the world's crappiest ecological protection regime, I don't think Big Oil can permanently damage the tundra. I'm just not that worked up over the ecological argument.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:21 AM on November 4, 2005

OT, but this from the pre-9/11 Cato slam on Clinton's future-car program:

"The only way these cars will sell is if gas prices go through the roof, which is politically unacceptable. Honda did sell 903 Insights in May, when gas approached $2.00 per gallon. But, without additional fuel taxes, this is an unsustainable price. And what politician (besides the defeated vice president) will make more expensive gasoline a campaign promise?"

To tell you the truth, I don't give a shit about Alito. Very little what the SCOTUS decides affects me, and the cases that do affect me like medical marijuana got decided the wrong way no thanks to the so-called liberals. But Gore was a promise of responsible, forward-looking government, same with Kerry.

Instead, we've got ... dunno, 8 years of disaster with a fiscal trainwreck looming after this clownshow leaves office.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:44 AM on November 4, 2005

History will not be kind to these blind, greedy, megalomaniacal ideologues.

Think Caligula cares that history wasn't very nice to his legacy? Why don't we go ask him?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:59 AM on November 4, 2005

It's entirely false to suggest that drilling in ANWR will discourage people from reducing their energy conservation. As long as there's a single global market for oil, the additional ANWR supply will be so trivial as to impact prices per gallon by at most a few cents.

Weighing against that absence of a negative impact, are two positive impacts of drilling in ANWR:

(1) increased revenue for the U.S. government at a time when we're really going to need it. (Medicare for the Boomers will be a crushing expense in the late 2010s and 2020s).

(2) an additional resource for strategic supply if the global market for oil stops functioning due to war or gross instability in the mideast.
posted by MattD at 5:33 AM on November 4, 2005

Just got back from two weeks on the North Slope - 100 miles above the Arctic Circle. Man, there is NOTHING there!

Kupraruk Gallery

Notice the pipelines are off the ground so caribou can walk under them.

You have to take a day class in environmental issues to be allowed on the slope. A spill of any size must be reported. The roads and wells have to have foam pads under them to avoid disturbing the tundra.

Later, you take a 2 hour flight from Anchorage to camp (or Deadhorse).

I wonder why anyone who's been there sees these 10s of thousands up miles of puddles and tundra (in fall) as some valuable rain forest.
posted by dand at 5:46 AM on November 4, 2005

"Inuit elder from the wilderness area saying that they were basically all for it"
Yeah, there's this myth of the noble savage who is the caretaker of his environment, but most o the Inuit are up there huffing gas and desperately poor.

And c'mon, in ten years of global warming, that's all gonna be Club Med up there anyway.
posted by klangklangston at 5:46 AM on November 4, 2005

By a 52-47 vote on S.1932 §401, the US Senate today directed the Department of the Interior...

Well, not really. The Senate voted to pass a bill which, if it makes it through the House, would, in fact, have that effect, but the Senate hasn't directed the Dept. of the Interior to do anything, yet. Of course, it's still pretty bad.
posted by MrMoonPie at 7:20 AM on November 4, 2005

An Escalade full of Alaskan oil - willful human ignorance in a nutshell with a spacious interior and cupholders to spare.

Man... I can get at least 4 good band names out of that sentence. :)
posted by antifuse at 7:35 AM on November 4, 2005

Awesome!
posted by Captaintripps at 7:44 AM on November 4, 2005

I can get at least 4 good band names out of that sentence.

Be my guest. But keep away from Cupholders To Spare. We're a six piece - guitar, drums, two bassists, a zitherist, bongos - and we do a lot of long freeform Franz Ferdinand meets Tiny Tim jam-rock type stuff.

Meantime, I'm wondering what the gas-huffing Inuit majority has to say about Caligula's application to build a Club Med out of caribou skulls in ANWR. Band name or two in there as well.
posted by gompa at 7:50 AM on November 4, 2005

One issue I'd read about awhile ago, but haven't seen mentioned above, is that the quality of the oil under ANWR is so low that it wouldn't even pass the standards tests for domestic use, and would need to be exported.

Does anybody have a source (or three) to back this up? It appears that the Senate also voted 80-something to *prohibit* exporting any oil drilled from ANWR, which would seem to render all of the oil useless if the above is true.
posted by schustafa at 8:02 AM on November 4, 2005

[expletive deleted], there are drastically less bikes in Beijing than before, and an ever increasing amount of private automobiles. The Chinese won't be asking why Americans are so lazy for very long (I found myself thinking the opposite in 1996 whenever a government-run store closed for what can only be called the siesta break).
posted by linux at 8:47 AM on November 4, 2005

Oh, and the Chinese themselves would think you're nuts if the west tries to emulate a China without the industrial and economic capacity to give a citizen a car, especially in today's China.

Beijing had only one subway ten years ago. It went in a circle. I think they added a straight line to it.

If anything, the public transportation systems in places like New York, London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo should be emulated. Yes, I added New York -- even Americans seem to forget that New York's transportation system, however convoluted and ancient, still produces a population that uses feet as the primary form of locomotion.
posted by linux at 8:54 AM on November 4, 2005

Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting of the U.S. Department of Energy wrote in March 2004

The USGS oil resource estimates are based largely on the geologic conditions that exist in the neighboring State lands. Consequently, there is considerable uncertainty regarding both the size and quality of the oil resources that exist in ANWR. Thus, the potential ultimate oil recovery and potential yearly production are uncertain.
posted by petebest at 9:10 AM on November 4, 2005

posted by peacay at 9:29 AM on November 4, 2005

Heywood, where is that graph from?
posted by poweredbybeard at 10:00 AM on November 4, 2005

**OOPS** - I meant: Heywood, where is that graph from?
posted by poweredbybeard at 10:00 AM on November 4, 2005

Why not drill in Antarctica?


I'm really lamenting the loss of conservation of nature for it's own sake. Apparently there is no spot of ground that shouldn't be paved over, mined, drilled, etc.
I'll hunt (if I've got a taste for venison) but I prefer just spending time in the wild. Just looking, keeping a light foot. Natural beauty should not have to be justified by the bottom line.
posted by Smedleyman at 11:21 AM on November 4, 2005

the graph is a screencap from the DOE freedomcar pdf.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:40 AM on November 4, 2005

...yesterday seeing an Inuit elder from the wilderness area saying that they were basically all for it. He was an unsophisticated fisherman and was pitted against an enthusiastic activist from Anchorage who spoke like a politician - not that she was bad or unconvincing or whatever, just that the contrast was a bit umm..cringe worthy. He and his people want money. It's not brain surgery.

Well, all the relatively unsophisticated and poor fisherman around the world fought to keep other people from bottom-dragging all of the carp (et al) out of the oceans, but simultaneously adopted the same practices for themselves, because they wanted money.

And look at the state of commercial fishing today, and how many carp are left, exactly?

Just saying: just because something meets the short-term economic goals of the locals doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
posted by davejay at 1:11 PM on November 4, 2005