DRILLING FOR ANSWERS

Now that the federal government has opened more land in Alaska to oil exploration, Congress has an opportunity to use the move to gain better information about drilling in the Arctic coastal plain and to generate revenue for government research and programs.

The Interior Department announced last week that it had decided to open 389,000 acres of tundra and shoreline to oil and gas exploration. The move reverses an eight-year compromise agreement aimed at protecting habitat for migratory birds and hunting ground for Alaskan natives.

Although the newly opened land is only 150 miles from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it has a very different purpose. It is part of the 23.5 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which was created in 1923 as an oil resource. Although most of the reserve is open to exploration and drilling, there were concerns, beginning with the Reagan administration, about protecting wildlife habitat in the area around Tekshekpuk Lake. One of the largest lakes in Alaska, it provides summer habitat to geese, tundra swans and other migratory birds. In 1998, then Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt put the area off limits to drilling.

That ban was lifted last week. The Bureau of Land Management, a division of the Interior Department, believes as much as 2 billion barrels of oil could be recovered from the area. That would be three-quarters of the recoverable oil in the entire reserve.

Environmental groups have already challenged the Interior decision in court. Despite claims from the department that opening this portion of the reserve will help meet the country’s energy needs, it would make only a dent in America’s 20 million-barrel-a-day appetite. Conserving oil, by requiring more fuel-efficient vehicles and factories, for example, would do much more.

Congress should ensure that federal revenues from oil exploration there are set aside for specific purposes as it does with off-shore drilling proceeds. At a minimum, the money should be used to fund research into how the burning of oil impacts climate change. Better yet, the money could be used to fund some of the programs that were slashed in the budget recently passed by Congress.

Drilling in the reserve can also provide useful data and experience to inform the debate over oil exploration in ANWR. Is it possible to drill in a sensitive wildlife area without disturbing the wildlife? Does minimizing the impacts cost so much that such projects are not economically feasible?

Answering such questions will allow for a more substantive debate in Congress, which is sure to consider drilling in ANWR again in the near future.