U.S. Energy Debate: White House Pushes Congress on Alaska Drilling
Reuters is reporting that the White House is pushing for an up vote on drilling in ANWR, with Gale Norton being the point person in the push.
“The reality is that this would be a significant energy contribution over many decades,” Interior Secretary Gale Norton said on Monday at a Heritage Foundation session on ANWR drilling. Speaking later at the National Press Club, Norton called the impending ANWR debate in the Congress “a watershed moment for Americans.”
The Bush administration is looking to lure votes from Democrats who hail from Northeast U.S. states where soaring heating costs this winter might spur them to support more oil drilling, Norton said. Norton was scheduled to made another speech on the topic later in the day.
Forget what the ‘experts’ say about how much gas and oil is up there. They’re wrong and not by a little bit, either. When Congress debated the original Alaskan pipeline, the environmental extremists said that they’d be lucky to get 5 years worth of oil out of the ground. They didn’t take into account the possibility new technologies would increase the ability to extract natural gas and crude oil, which dramatically increased the amount of ‘tappable’ oil and natural gas. Needless to say, they’re still getting a million barrels of oil PER DAY out of Prudhoe Bay almost 30 years later, with no signs of it stopping anytime soon.
The environmental extremists said that the pipeline would disrupt the migration habits of caribou. A decade later, I remember seeing a picture of a caribou cow nursing her calf underneath the pipeline in either Outdoor Life or Field and Stream magazine. I guess the caribou didn’t agree with the environmental extremists. As I said then, we’d be wise to listen to what the caribou said back then.
This also represents a ‘moment-of-truth’ moment in that what happens will determine alot about our ability to decrease our dependance on foreign oil. In short, it’s a national security issue. Will people cave to the environmental extremists or will they do what’s right? Permitting the drilling for natural gas in ANWR is the right thing to do for those of us living in northern tier states because we’re all conservation-minded in terms of adding insulation to our homes, installing the most energy efficient windows and furnaces, etc.
The only options left are setting the thermostat at 64 or energy companies producing more natural gas. The choice seems simple to those of us in the Rust Belt.
RELATED:
GOP Weak-Kneed on Energy Policy
Driving the Refinery Fight
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing
December 14th, 2005 at 8:35 pm
Regarding a different energy source, nuclear power is back in the news with increasing frequency due to global warming concerns. While I’m a longtime nuclear energy worker myself, I can’t say that I’m sure what the future of nuclear energy should be (really). But I am sure we will make better decisions if we understand what nuclear energy is right now. Yet, I’ve come to realize that the real world of nuclear power is unknown to the general public, which has had far more access to the workings of the Starship Enterprise than to the nuke plant down the street. In response, I’ve written an insider’s account of the American nuclear power industry, called “Rad Decisionâ€Â. The book is available, at no cost to readers, at RadDecision.blogspot.com.
Designed for the lay reader, this unique peek beyond the security fence is in the form of a techno-thriller novel. Rad Decision covers nuclear plant operation, events such as Chernobyl and TMI, and ends with how an accident might be handled today. It also includes, for the first time, an insider perspective on the politics and human relations that greatly impact how nuclear units in the U.S. are operated.
At RadDecision.blogspot.com the book is presented as a series of Episodes (15 minutes reading time each) and also provided as a PDF file. This is an independent, non-profit project with no advertising. All sides of the nuclear power debate will find items to like, and dislike, within Rad Decision.
I hope you’ll take the opportunity to take a look at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com
James Aach