Political Quotes

“I rise today to once again open a small portion of the Arctic coastal plain, in my home State of Alaska, to oil and gas development. I am introducing the bill because, now more than ever, new production in northern Alaska is vital not only to my state's future, but also to our Nation's energy and economic security. It has been known for more than nearly 4 decades that the 1.5 million acres of the Arctic coastal plain that lie inside the northern one- eleventh of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are the most prospective lands in North America for a major conventional oil and gas discovery. The U.S. Geological Survey continues to estimate that this part of the coastal plain--which represents just 3 percent of the coastal plain in all of northern Alaska--has a mean likelihood of containing 10.4 billion barrels of oil and 8.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, as well as a reasonable chance of economically producing 16 billion barrels of oil. Even the relatively recent major finds in North Dakota's Bakken field and the recent estimates of shale oil in Texas' Wolfcamp formation pale in comparison, as ANWR is likely to hold over three times more conventional oil than any other onshore energy deposit in North America. In the 1990s, opponents dismissed ANWR's potential and argued that the nearby National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska was forecast to contain almost as much oil. However, early this decade the U.S.…”