Alaska Site Would Help U.S. Oil Market

www.newsok.com 2003-03-18 The Oklahoman

WAR WITH Iraq figures to make an already tight world oil market even tighter.

Industry experts think it will take other oil producers weeks to offset the loss of 2 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil. U.S. motorists who already are paying higher prices at the gasoline pump should brace to pay even more if hostilities break out.

As the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, U.S. crude-oil supplies are stretched, partly because of the recent oil workers' strike in Venezuela, a major exporter, and fears of a war with Iraq. Gasoline prices now average $2.08 a gallon in California.

Hate to say we told you so, but the prospect of gasoline selling for $2, $2.50 or even $3 a gallon -- and the potential for even greater national energy calamities -- makes us wish the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was producing oil and natural gas.

Of course, that would've required some foresight a decade ago, some sense in Washington that at some critical juncture down the road it would be good to have domestic supplies available to temporarily offset the sudden, potentially catastrophic loss of oil from a major overseas supplier.

That's right: If policy-makers in 1993 had given the go-ahead, the refuge's oil and natural gas would be online now, and we wouldn't be sweating $3 gas or even greater risks now.

What do we have instead? A remote, untapped wilderness that produces what it has produced for centuries: lots of caribou and mosquitoes.

Truth is, even if energy production were going on in an airport-sized sliver of the refuge that's roughly the size of South Carolina, the bugs and the beasts still would be thriving -- and the United States would be much less susceptible to dangerous fluctuations in the oil markets.

If there's war and Iraq's oil disappears from the world market, experts believe strategic reserves in the U.S., Germany, Japan and other countries may have to be tapped until OPEC and other suppliers can catch up with demand. Soon, we suspect, Americans will get a vivid illustration of why our own available resources should be developed.