Drilling In ANWR – The Lies Told By The Democratic Party and What They Don’t Want You To Know!

This is the ANWR that Democrats want people to think of when the concept of drilling is brought up.

ANWR – The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an area of more than 19 million acres, located in northeastern Alaska. It sits just east of Prudhoe Bay, which is North America’s largest oil field, accounting for 17% of the United States’ domestic oil production. A 2,000 acre portion of ANWR (roughly 1%), known as the “1002 area,” is listed by the U.S. Geological Survey as having “significant crude oil deposits” that ultimately could result in production of up to 4.3 billion barrels per day.

Serious debate about drilling in a portion of the wildlife refuge has brought about controversy that splits, for the most part, straight down Party lines. Republicans are in favor of exploring and extracting oil in the 1002 area. Democrats are against drilling there, stating that it would disrupt the foraging and mating habits of the porcupine caribou. So who is right?

First, lets take a look at the ANWR that the Left is showing to the American public (top, left). Isn’t it beautiful? The splendid colors of the plains; the lush vegetation; the majestic mountains that tower in the background. Pictures of playful polar bears, grazing caribou and glacial melting are pictured in any number of Left wing publications that describe the horrors that would come to this, America’s last frontier, if the big, bad oil companies were to bring their filthy drills into the area. Environmentalists point to the polar bear, that has now been listed as “threatened” by the Department of the Interior, even though their population has increased five-fold in the last three decades. They scream about disrupting the mating habits of the porcupine caribou, an animal hunted and killed as the chief source of meat by native tribes. Democrats, of course, march right along to the woeful drum beat. What is not being shown, however, is the true picture of the 1002 area, where the proposed drilling would be done.

The proposed drilling site, known as the "1002" area is hardly the fertile haven that Democrats would have people believe it is.

To the left, is a picture of the 1002 area, the proposed location for the drilling within the ANWR area. It hardly looks like the fertile ground that environmentalists and their Democratic Party political mouthpieces are screaming about, does it? The small section for the proposed drilling is essentially a barren wasteland in the summer and a frozen tundra in the winter. The animals that they so desperately want to protect, have little interest in the area. Even if they did, would that be so bad?

Wildlife flourishing at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska

To the right, is a picture of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. The same tired arguments against drilling were made here: “The wildlife will be displaced” … “Their mating habits will be irreversibly changed.” As you can see, there is hardly a problem with the caribou population at Prudhoe Bay. In fact, the arctic caribou population here has increased from 3,000 to 27,000 in the last twenty years.  If Democrats had gotten their way, this, the largest oil production facility in America, never would have opened. Our national security and economic stability would be even more threatened than they already are by our even greater dependence upon foreign oil.

“So what’s with the lie?,” you may ask. “Why would the Democratic Party possibly want to limit the United States’ access to oil?” Part of the answer lies in the connection (campaign financing) that the Democratic Party has always received from extreme environmental groups and their lobbyists. Al Gore himself, once advocated that the U.S. government should artificially raise the price of gas to discourage oil consumption. The Democratic Party’s current messiah, Barack Obama, has said that he doesn’t mind the increase in gas prices; he only wished it hadn’t accelerated so rapidly.

The fact is, after promising great changes when they got a majority in Congress, the Democratic party has sat on their hands for the past two years as the price at the pump has more than doubled. This was done to further discredit the Bush administration at the expense of the country. The American public, they reasoned correctly, is too stupid to realize that the President of the United States has no control over fuel prices. If he did, we would have been drilling in ANWR long ago. Supply and demand is the only real factor in the equation. By limiting our ability to drill and increase supply, they have been able to kill two birds with one stone (please excuse the expression, nature lovers); they can “save the planet” (and their financial backing from the tree huggers) and gain political power.