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Patriots or Polar Bears
Arctic Refuge's Oil Draws Renewed Interest in Time of War
 Listen to Allison Aubrey's report on ANWR.
 Read about arguments for and against drilling.
Trace ANWR's history.
View a photo gallery of ANWR wildlife.
Nov. 12, 2001 -- Tucked into the northeast corner of Alaska is a 19-million-acre chunk of tundra known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ANWR's rugged landscape offers essential habitat for the polar bear, the Porcupine caribou herd and hundreds more species of animals and plants. Beneath the permafrost, petroleum deposits fuel a political debate revived by the White House and stoked by the events of Sept. 11.
Congress is again considering whether to allow oil drilling in an area covering about 10 percent of the refuge. The House has already lent its approval to the quest for oil. The Senate has yet to take up the issue. The Bush administration began advocating for drilling before the recent terrorist attacks inflamed tensions between the United States and the Arab world. But the advent of a shooting war gives fresh momentum to advocates of self-reliance.
NPR's Allison Aubrey reports that both sides are waging public relations campaigns that use powerful images in place of hard facts. Veterans of foreign wars recently gathered on the lawn of the Capitol to urge support for the Bush energy plan and for drilling in the refuge, sending a message that patriotic Americans support drilling at home. Conservationists counter with the threat of a wilderness plundered and wildlife put in peril by man's thirst for petroleum.
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Oil in America
Just weeks after the Arab oil embargo began in 1973, President Nixon launched the nation's first real energy plan, dubbed Project Independence. Since then:
• Imports have risen from 36 percent to over 60 percent
• Production has dropped by 50 percent
• Consumption has risen to 25 percent of the world's oil supply, with the U.S. containing only 2 to 3 percent of the world's reserves
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No one knows how much oil may lie beneath the Wildlife Refuge's tundra. Drilling proponents cite ANWR as an important new source of domestic oil, saying recovering the deposits found there could help the U.S. reduce dependence on imports. Opponents say the ANWR deposits offer a relatively limited source of oil and fear the long-term impact of drilling on wildlife in a largely undisturbed -- though not pristine -- wilderness area.
Wildlife advocates say drilling proponents have overestimated the amount of oil available and underestimated the amount of time it would take to produce oil from the refuge. Those who want to drill cite evidence that caribou herds have thrived around Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, where oil wells, pipelines, roads and processing facilities spread across the terrain. But some researchers whose work is cited say the conclusions drawn by the competing camps are often oversimplified.
"In a case like this it's too complicated to get a yes/no answer," says Matt Cronin, a biologist at the University of Alaska.
Yet Congress faces a yes/no decision on drilling in ANWR -- a judgment call that could rely more on sentiment than on science. And the question before lawmakers seems to be: "Who are you for? The patriots or the polar bears?"
In Depth
Browse for other NPR stories about the energy debate.
Other Resources
• Follow the debate in the Senate and read statements by legislators at www.senate.gov.
• Read the Department of the Interior's review of oil and gas exploration in ANWR.
• Read the U.S. Geological Survey's 1998 study on the potential for oil development in the 1002 Area.
• Read about ANWR and its wildlife at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Web site.
• Read arguments against drilling in ANWR at the Natural Resources Defense Council Web site.
• The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has been following the issue closely, pointing out discrepancies in data used for and against drilling. Visit PEER's Web site.
• Read about the Alaska Wilderness League's campaign to keep oil drilling out of ANWR.
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