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According to a new national poll released by PACWEST Communications of Portland, Oregon, Americans strongly support gaining access to American oil and gas from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, also known as ANWR.
In the face of soaring gasoline prices caused by crude oil prices reaching $75 per barrel, nearly 60% of those polled support oil production in ANWR.
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The powerful environmental lobby has repeatedly defeated attempts to open ANWR, claiming that production there would harm the environment. However, as Phillips points out, the Clinton administration had no such reservations when it proposed oil production on another section of Alaska's North Slope.
Indeed, Mr. Clinton's Department of Energy issued a comprehensive report titled "Environmental Benefits of Advanced Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Technology" in 1999.
It describes techniques such as constructing ice roads for moving equipment that vanish without a trace when summer arrives in the Arctic, as well as directional drilling, which allows many wells to be drilled from a single location. These and other techniques would allow oil and gas production on just 2,000 of ANWR's 19,500,000 acres.
Phillips believes that if Congress votes to open ANWR to oil production, the effect on prices could be immediate, even though actual production would be years away.
"Any action that even slightly reduces such shortages could have a significant impact on prices."
Opening ANWR could very well be one of these actions. According to the US Department of Energy, ANWR could hold up to 16 billion barrels of oil. That is the equivalent of 30 years of Saudi Arabian imports. Peak output is estimated to be 1.5 million barrels per day, or about 7.5 percent of this country's daily usage—enough, according to experts, to influence global prices.