Senate OKs Alaska wildlife refuge drilling

"Economically recoverable oil" is the more relevant figure, according to USGS officials, meaning a company would find it financially worth the effort. But that's even harder to determine because it depends on fluctuating oil prices, a yet unknown accumulation size, recovery technology, and proximity to pipelines and other existing infrastructure.

What all of this means, claim drilling opponents, is that ANWR likely contains less than a year's worth of oil - none of it reaching the US market for at least 10 years.

As an officially designated wildlife refuge, ANWR would have been off-limits to drill rigs. But when the 19 million-acre refuge was established in 1980, and in recognition of the potential for oil and gas there, the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain along the Arctic Ocean was left open to leasing and exploration.

Oil there may be, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service says the drillable area "is critically important to the ecological integrity of the whole Arctic Refuge, providing essential habitats for numerous internationally important species."

Most Americans will never see the place or the caribou, polar bears, muskoxen, arctic foxes, wolverines, grizzly bears, snow geese, and other migrating birds that inhabit its tundra just north of the Brooks Range. But for much of the public this "American Serengeti," as environmentalists call it, represents an ideal of natural wildness that must remain pristine.

While the fight in Congress over ANWR may be a close one, public opinion weighs heavily against drilling.

A recent survey conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters asked simply, "Should oil drilling be allowed in America's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?" The results: 53 percent against, 38 percent in favor. Regarding the current effort to attach ANWR to a budget resolution rather than vote directly on its merits, a whopping 73 percent agreed that drilling there "is too important to the American public and future generations to be snuck through."

More broadly, according to this survey, Americans favor conservation (34 percent) and alternate forms of energy (39 percent) over domestic oil production (18 percent) as "the best way to reduce US dependence on foreign oil."

Meanwhile, industry interest in the politically charged Arctic refuge seems to have waned as well.

"The enthusiasm of government officials about ANWR exceeds that of industry because oil companies are driven by market forces, investing resources in direct proportion to the economic potential, and the evidence so far about ANWR is not promising," oil industry consultant Wayne Kelley told The New York Times recently.

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