President Bush has introduced a bill that will allow oil drilling to occur in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR). The ANWR is located in Alaska. It houses many species of animals that live primarily in that area. The drilling would take these habitats away. There is also the real problem of oil spills and tanker breakdowns. The bush administration believes that drilling in the ANWR will be good for the economy. This will be done through creating jobs, lowering the price of oil, and creating less dependency on importing. The ANWR also has a very clean supply of oil that can be easily collected and refined. The Alaskan area that is under consideration is 1.5 million acres in area. Bush says he needs about 400,000 acres to support the oil drilling. This amount of land will effect approximately 325,000 animals. This would cause many animals to lose their habitat and their breeding ground. If this happens some of the animals may become extinct. This would be an irretrievable loss just for oil. In order to stop the oil drilling in the ANWR there have been a few ideas suggested. The most plausible idea would be to increase fuel efficiency in cars. If the fuel economy of cars and small trucks was raised to 39 miles per gallon, this would save us 16 times more oil than the ANWR can supply us with. Doing this would make oil drilling in the ANWR unnecessary. The ANWR drilling will supposedly free us from the need to import oil from other countries. However this process may take months, even years. First of all, finding the oil reserves would take time. They would need to drill different areas until they found a sufficient amount to build a well. Secondly, the proposed pipeline that will get oil to the lower 48 states will take a lot of time to create. Thirdly, estimates are that there is between 6 and 16 billion barrels of oil, at our current usage that amount would last less than 20 years. This would probably be just as much time as it would take us to build the infrastructure needed. Drilling in the ANWR would create around 400,000 jobs. Many of these jobs would be in creating the structures needed to support the drilling. That means most of the jobs are temporary. These jobs would be paid by who? The American people. While the oil becomes cheaper because it is not imported, our taxes will rise to cover the cost of construction and paying for the 400,000 jobs that will have been created. Also, some jobs may be lost by people already making their living in the area. Fishing would be very limited because of the offshore drills. Many of the tourist shops and hotels would have to be closed because the drilling would be so near. So, is this the best option for America? In my eyes it is not a good decision. I think that the oil drilling in the ANWR will be a terrible mistake that would be irreversible. The consequences are too great to take the risk. The Bush administration needs to rethink its plan.
