Rob Bishop: “I thank the gentleman one more time, and if I could reiterate what the gentleman from Arizona started by just pointing…”

“I thank the gentleman one more time, and if I could reiterate what the gentleman from Arizona started by just pointing out that this entire refuge is about the size of South Carolina. The only area we are talking about is the area in green, which from the beginning was set aside for the purpose of oil exploration. That was part of the common sense approach we had when we preserved this land. The only part we are talking about, as he so brilliantly put it, and the closeness of the original pipeline, is this small little red dot. That is the entire area. If we view the second shot, we can see that that small dot is only about 2,000 acres. That is the footprint, which is smaller than Dulles Airport, which services Washington, D.C. The amount of area we are talking about is less than what is Dulles Airport compared to the size of the State of South Carolina. And as the gentleman from Arizona said, this could be a significant find in giving us domestic security with the domestic source of energy we need. And as we see by this particular chart, the amount of oil that is recoverable in the ANWR area is second only to what we receive from Saudi Arabia. If we want to eventually solve problems in the future and have some kind of independence with a domestic source of energy, this is a significant piece of the puzzle.”