Pottstown Mercury Guest Editorial by Craig Williams: "ANWR Drilling Makes Sense for Energy Needs"

Op-Ed

Pottstown Mercury Guest Editorial by Craig Williams: "ANWR drilling makes sense for energy needs"

With gas prices at as much as $4 per gallon local residents are feeling the impact in other aspects of our daily lives. As a result of high gas prices, the cost of food and other consumer goods is more expensive, police and fire stations are cutting back on patrols and volunteers, and schools are decreasing the areas where they will provide busing this fall. Everything in our daily lives is tied to energy.

Increasing our domestic oil production, specifically in the Arctic tundra of Alaska will help address the current energy crisis. I recently traveled to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to determine first-hand if we could responsibly drill for oil and natural gas in a limited area of the refuge. I came away from my experience firmly convinced that we should begin exploration of the coastal plain of ANWR immediately.

We send $700 billion each year to foreign countries for oil. Those countries, many of which are openly hostile to our democratic way of life, provide 67 percent of our oil needs and have enormous control over our economy. Taking immediate control of our own energy needs is a matter of national and economic security. We need to reduce — and eventually eliminate — our dependence on foreign oil as we bridge our way to the next generation of renewable energy. Drilling in ANWR will not fix our current energy crisis, but it will help.

During my trip, we flew the entire length of ANWR and large portions of the reserve are truly beautiful with rolling mountains, rivers, and fields of wild flowers. But the area proposed for drilling is on the other side of the Brooks Mountain Range. It is a flat and barren tundra. There are no trees and I saw no teeming wildlife. And this was summer. Winter on the North Slope lasts 8-9 months when the coastal plain is covered in ice and snow and temperatures reach 30 degrees below zero.

I spoke with community leaders in the small Eskimo village of Kaktovik — located within ANWR itself. Those leaders overwhelmingly support drilling in ANWR. This is a subsistence community that lives off of the land and they insist that any drilling on their tundra must be done responsibly. They believe that it can.

I also compared the 1970s oil technology in Prudhoe Bay to some of the latest technology at a facility called Alpine. The footprint of the facilities has shrunk dramatically. A drilling site that once required as much as 140 acres can now be compressed into as little as 5 acres. Today's facilities are also largely self-sustained, requiring no permanent supply roads across the vast tundra. This new technology, including the drastically compressed footprint, would be used in ANWR. The local natives insist on it, and it is the right thing to do.

In Barrow, Alaska, I spoke with officials from North Slope Borough. All were overwhelmingly in favor of responsible drilling in ANWR. They also derided the Democrats' "use it or lose it" stance. They noted that although the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska has recoverable oil, companies are unable to drill there because environmentalists have kept the leases locked up in litigation for the past 10 years. They also pointed out it would require a 250 mile pipeline to reach the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and that the Army Corps of Engineers will not permit the companies to build a pipeline over a major river. In addition, the Bureau of Land Management will not issue the construction permits to begin drilling. They correctly saw "use it or lose it" as a political charade designed to deflect attention from the inaction by Congress on this issue.

ANWR is not the answer to our energy needs, but it is the best first step. The area being proposed for drilling makes up less than one half of one percent of the coastal plain of ANWR — an area that is a barren, frozen tundra 8 to 9 months of the year. Modern technology will also allow us to reduce the size of any new drilling operation and minimize impacts on the environment. In addition, I heard from local leaders who overwhelmingly support drilling in ANWR — and these are people who live there and know the terrain better than any Pennsylvanian could ever hope to.

We can recover critical oil and natural gas from ANWR in well under the 10 years that Democrats tell us it will take. Now we have to convince the Democrats in Congress ... or vote them out. They are the only thing standing between us and economic relief and independence. It is time to take control of our own country. Our future security demands it.

Craig Williams is the Republican candidate for the 7th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, which includes parts of Delaware, Chester and Montgomery counties. He is a former federal prosecutor, Marine combat veteran, and former active duty Deputy Legal Counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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