The president of the United States wants Congress to approve oil and gas leasing of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain. The new secretary of energy says he'll be an "energetic advocate" of leasing. The chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee wants Congress to make the long-awaited move. Yet the US producing industry acts as though it has other priorities (OGJ, Jan. 10, 2005, p. 21).
Against the political odds, President George W. Bush made ANWR leasing the core of an energy policy he proposed early in his first term. The initiative actually survived the House of Representatives but eventually fell victim to environmental opposition. That opposition is automatic and uncompromising. ANWR represents holy ground in the protectionist wing of environmentalism, to which every leasing initiative becomes a fund-raising opportunity.
Dangerously pragmatic
The opposition has made the producing industry dangerously pragmatic. Much as companies might like to drill the mammoth geologic structures under ANWR's Coastal Plain, they know that leasing, if it happened, would be only the first hurdle. Protectionists would lobby for restrictive lease stipulations. They'd challenge the adequacy of environmental documentation in court. They'd apply political and legal pressure to delay and complicate permitting. In every way possible, they'd postpone physical activity and devaluate leases. They've had lots of practice in the US West.
Oil producers know all this. They know that victory in the fight over leasing in Congress would inaugurate a sequence of hassles that might never end. They know that work on the Coastal Plain would occur under the suspicious vigil of news media and environmental groups, that every oil drip would generate headlines, that the threat of litigation would be constant, and that any sign of heavy-handedness on their parts might hurt their business. They also know that if a lease sale ever is held, it will not then be advantageous to have shown excessive enthusiasm about ANWR beforehand.
Yet the political climate is uniquely favorable for ANWR leasing. Producers should take advantage of the opportunity and argue the issue from several directions.
The potential lift ANWR might give US oil production is as compelling as ever. It should be part of the case for leasing—but not the whole case. Domestic oil production doesn't pack much political punch these days. It should; it just doesn't. And leasing opponents easily forestall discussion by dividing reserves guesses by total US oil demand and asserting from the meaningless answer that ANWR can't cover enough consumption to warrant the supposed environmental risk. The distorted logic works.
So the industry needs to supplement the domestic-production argument with attestations about employment and regional and national economies. Even Americans who know or care little about oil production pay attention to jobs and wealth. The native peoples of ANWR certainly do, which is why most of them support leasing. And it's no coincidence that when ANWR leasing first received approval of the House of Representatives, it had the strong support of organized labor. Leasing opponents call employment projections associated with ANWR development too high. But that misses the point. Why should the US deny itself any jobs and wealth from resource development?
Environmental peril
The inevitable answer to that question, of course, is peril to the environment. On this, the industry must be relentless. Drilling and production would disturb a small portion of the Coastal Plain, which occupies only 13% of the 19-million-acre refuge. Modern methods would make disturbance to this tiny area minor. Yet protectionists, whose business it is to obstruct economic activity, portray the effects as ruinous.
If posturing like this can stymie assessment of the best untested, onshore, oil and gas prospects in the US, it can preclude exploration and development anywhere. Indeed, it does just that. The political stone wall around ANWR leasing gives undue credence to protectionist exaggeration and helps it preclude leasing and obstruct oil and gas operations on federal land in the West, off the East and West Coasts, and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The protectionist profession made ANWR leasing a flagship issue for a reason. The producing profession—which can prove that there are routes to protection other than inactivity if given the chance—should treat the issue with equal fervor.
