Oil Drilling in Alaska
Oil Drilling in Alaska There is believed to be between 5.7 and 16 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil in Alaska. The only thing holding us back from drilling there because it would damage a protected national wildlife refuge in the act killing many animals. The controversy of whether to drill there or not has been going on since around 1977. The last two presidents we had were on different sides of how they felt about the drilling. There are many positives to drilling in Alaska but for every positive there is also a negative. For whether a person is for or against drilling is strongly based on how strongly they feel the importance of every effect of the drilling. George W. Bush was a strong supporter for the drilling in Alaska. His argument for being pro drilling is that it will help our economy. Many new jobs would be created and that America would be less dependent on foreign sources of energy. This will improve America's economy which has took a plunge over the last few years. He also said that with all the studies that ANWR ( Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) has done that scientists have created was of drilling for the oil with having barely any effect on the earth. If this is true that means that most of the people who were opposed to it, because it would destroy wildlife, would be happy. The area that the drilling would be done in makes up only 8 percent of the whole refuge. Drilling in Alaska would also save America a vast amount of money. If we were to drill our predicted savings in a 12 years time is between 135 and 327 billion dollars. The total production would make up about 0.8 percent of the total world oil consumption in 2030. That means that it would make a drastic change in the world's oil prices. A CNN pole showed that 59 percent of people are for drilling for oil in Alaska. This pole was taken in February of 2008. The president opposing this idea from the last few years is Barack Obama. He thought that the drilling would permanently