George W. Bush's position on

ANWR: Should drilling for oil be allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska? ANWR is an area of northeast Alaska that contains 19 million acres. 8.9 million acres of ANWR is designated as wilderness. The costal plain which consists of 1.5 million acres is not designated as wilderness and is the area where oil drilling has been proposed. Most geologists agree that the potential is on the order of billions of barrels of recoverable oil and trillions of cubic feet of recoverable gas. Experts say that it could take anywhere from three and a half years to up to ten years to begin receiving oil from ANWR.

Description of candidate's position: President Bush is in favor of drilling in ANWR. Drilling in ANWR would disturb just 2,000 acres of the 19 million acre refuge, which is less than one percent. President Bush believes this can be done in an environmentally sound way, and could provide up to 1 million barrels of oil a day for nearly 20 years by 2025, and lessen American dependency of foreign oil supplies.

Quotation from the candidate: "I believe we should, (drill in ANWR) and I know we can do so in environmentally friendly ways. They say that had we been exploring there a decade ago, we'd have an additional million barrels of oil coming into our country. That is necessary when we're in a world of tight supply. In other words, there's -- the demand for energy has gone up primarily because of China's growth. And the supplies of crude around the world are not keeping up with demand. And so if you're dependent on foreign sources of energy, like we are, you get affected at the gas pump. That additional million barrels of oil a day would have affected world price and would have helped America become less dependent on foreign sources of energy." link

Assessment of the proposal:

Positive: According to The Environmental Policy Task Force, which is a project of The National Center For Public Policy Research, a non-partisan, non-profit education foundation. "It is possible to drill for oil in ANWR without hurting the refuge's environment. First, only a very small amount of land is needed for oil production. Second, strict federal laws are already in place that require companies to protect wildlife during oil and gas operations on federal land."

Negative: The Brookings Institute, which is a private, non-profit, independent institute analyzing U.S. government policy and international relations argues against the drilling in ANWR and for greater efforts to improve energy efficiency, (especially in vehicle efficiency), as well as to develop and expand the long-term use of domestic renewables.

Comparison: John Kerry is against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,and has been one of the leading voices against drilling in ANWR. He believes drilling would disrupt the environmental stability of ANWR. Instead of drilling John Kerry believes in increasing car mileage requirements, giving incentives to buy environment friendly cars, and using oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He believes that these measures can offset an increase in the world's demand for oil. He would rather decrease demand than increase supply.

Link to Kerry's issue page