Oil: The Alaskan Issue

I am not enthusiastic about drilling the ANWR, but I think we’d be better off drilling it before the panic than after, when we will desperately grant every concession and overlook any abuse.

Conundrum No. 1: 
If I am right, then it would be better for a “green administration” to do the oversight on the  “Not-green” thing.

Conundrum No. 2:
We could only hold fast to green conditions during a market upsurge in price, because green drilling is more expensive to accomplish—the price has to make the effort worthwhile. However, a price upsurge means panic mode, when we want product and don’t care about method.

Conundrum No. 3:
If I was in charge, I would drill the ANWR as greenly as possible, and commandeer it as part of a strategic reserve for the Pacific coast and Hawaii. This would make sense for the nation, but private oil is a more efficient upstream operator, and they won’t want to have anything to do with a plan like that.

So the USG would join a joint venture with independent oil companies (many partners, but one turnkey operator), where the U.S. takes its lease price in barrels. That is what the rest of the world does, and it works.

Except the government has this huge deficit, and the invitation to sell oil rather than bank it strategically would be huge.

By looking at these three conundrums, you can extrapolate how our polarized politics is not doing us any good at all in many critical areas—not just energy. But I’ll take it further:

Conundrum No. 4:
The answers to the first three conundrums lies in getting a statesman rather than a leader or a politician. However, it’s still politics, and the political capital spent on this one would be massive. Your statesman must be a politician, or she won’t be a statesman very long.

So we will drill the ANWR when it is expedient and we are desperate and don’t pay attention.

Therefore, I am not enthusiastic about drilling the ANWR . . . but . . . .

Anti-Drilling, ANWR: Defenders of Wildlife site, and there are others, none of whom appear to study economics  . . .  .

Pro-Drilling, ANWR: Independent Oil's ANWR.org site, which, how efficient of them to get the .org site that signifies non-profits . . . . Map courtesy US Fisheries & Wildlife Service.