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S.E. Wood Mountain or molehill? We have an energy shortage, primarily because
of a lack of petroleum products. Gasoline and diesel fuel for
our vehicles. Natural gas and heavy oils for heating and power
generation. As supplies decrease, prices increase. If you doubt that, just go fill up at any
local service station. But auto fuel costs are only the tip of
the iceberg. Rising energy costs are reflected in everything
we see and do. Vice President Cheney recently stated, "As
a country, we have demanded more and more energy. But we have
not brought online the supplies needed to meet that demand."
True. At the height of the OPEC crisis, we imported
38 percent of our crude oil from abroad. Now we import 55 percent!
Geological surveys indicate we have a 30-year supply of untapped
crude in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on the north
slope of Alaska. George W. has proposed that we develop it as
a means of solving the California energy crisis, and to prevent
similar outages elsewhere throughout our country. The liberals
are having a cow at the thought of destroying this, our last
"pristine wilderness." Whenever there is a TV news report, they always
show lovely photos of salmon leaping over cascading waterfalls,
and herds of reindeer grazing in the green grassy meadows. There
ain't no salmon, because there ain't no water ... it's all ice!
And there ain't no reindeer, moose or anything else. ANWR is
located some 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. There
ain't nothin' there but snow, ice and barren wasteland ... year
round! The pictures you see are probably from Yosemite, Yellowstone
or somewhere much farther south. Developing an oil field isn't like the surface
mining we are accustomed to seeing here in Alabama, Tennessee,
and Kentucky that desecrate the land forever. The surface area
of an oil field is relatively small. Drilling machines are brought
in to drill and cap the wells, and are then removed. Sometimes
a pump is installed at the well-head to transfer the crude to
the pipeline, but if subterranean pressures are great, a pump
may not be needed. That's it. There is no massive scarifying
of the landscape. As for the Alaskan field, let's look at the
numbers. Alaska is a huge place - 378 million acres. Of this,
ANWR comprises 19.5 million acres, about the size of South Carolina.
Within ANWR, 1.5 million acres constitute the northern Coastal
Plain where oil reserves are believed to be present. Within that
area, a total of only 2,000 acres would be required to accommodate
the derricks, the pumps, the tanks, the terminals; all the structures
and equipment associated with the exploration and retrieval of
the crude. By comparison, the City of Sparta covers 3,562 acres,
including the recently developed Gillen subdivision! So why are all the liberal Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, having such a tizzy over developing an area of barren Arctic wasteland that is only two-thirds the size of the City of Sparta? It obviously isn't for the environmental reasons they would like you to believe. One good-sized cloverleaf on the Washington Beltway would destroy more prime farmland than that, and there are dozens of those! So what are the liberal's real motives that would hold our entire nation hostage to imported oil for the next 30 years? Think about it. |