The Alaska Wildlife Range

The question about drilling for oil in the Alaska Wildlife Range is not one concerning national need or national interest, but about who gets the right to develop. The oil reserves under the Alaska Wildlife Range are known to be significant. There are billions of barrels of oil down there. That's a lot of oil by the standards of people or corporations, but a modest amount in relation to the amount of oil we in the United States use. One estimate puts the amount as equivalent to approximately 200 days of our nation's use of oil—a little over half a year's worth—certainly not enough on which to base a long-term energy policy.

The concern for conservation values for the Range's area are real, as development of any kind in the far North produces permanent damage to the environment. Just one of the many valuable assets of the Range that would be threatened by oil development is the largest free-roaming caribou herd in the world: the Range is the herd's home. However, numerous other values also would have to be foregone if there were to be development of the drilling facilities and construction of the pipeline, roads, airstrips, and towns. We saw development occur at Prudhoe Bay with modest damage and no perceptible effect on the wildlife, but Prudhoe Bay is not the Alaska Wildlife Range with its extensive caribou calving ground. Nor can we always be sure that one past experience will provide proper guidance for a margin of safety in a different case.

President Bush has called for the development of the Alaska Wildlife Range but, since his Administration does not have an energy policy, it is difficult to see where the development of the Range would fit into any national strategy. It is granted that, if the United States' economy is to break loose from its present stagnation and grow sufficiently to pull us out of the current recession, as well as break the stranglehold Japan has on our economy because of the Reagan and Bush Administrations, adequate oil supplies will be needed. However, even if we were to begin drilling on the Alaska Wildlife Range tomorrow, the oil would not be here in time to affect this recession or our relations with Japan.

If the United States had a comprehensive energy policy, one could easily see the Alaska Wildlife Range fitting in some place, if not immediately then in the future. However, without a national energy policy that incorporates an express national purpose and role for the Range's oil, decisions of the magnitude required concerning the Alaska Wildlife Range's future life would be made without the necessary context, making it next to impossible to render intelligent, nation-promoting judgments. Remember, the Alaska Wildlife Range is part of the public domain. It is part of the patrimony of all Americans and represents the commonwealth. All citizens sovereign have an unalienable right to an equal share of the commonwealth, yet only the State of Alaska has a plan whereby its citizens benefit from income from the public domain. The Congress treats income from the public domain like found money, and in these days it simply applies such income toward our unneeded public debt.

Both the Reagan and Bush Administrations have treated the public domain as something to privatize, thereby alienating the capital possessions of the citizens sovereign for the quick, short-term benefit of a few individuals or corporations. Using income from the public domain to offset the public debt, or for any other purpose for which taxes should be used, is misappropriation of the assets of the sovereign, We the People.

We are drifting toward an oil policy, unconsciously and slowly. We are now dependent on foreign oil to do the little every day things in American life. It is very unlikely that we will want to change our habits in the near term and there is no reason that we should. The myth of "Fortress America" has the nation energy independent, and one day it might well be so, but only after we have conducted the necessary research to harness solar energy. However, for the present and foreseeable future, the myth is a bit tattered.

We are suffering a double whammy these days as oil also represents a large share of our foreign trade debt. In a country with a healthy economy, the amount of money we pay for foreign oil would be a bargain. But the fact is that we are debtors. If we had a healthy manufacturing and industrial economy we could easily afford to import oil. However, as long as the leadership of our country sees us primarily as a service economy, we will continue to have problems as the service sector is not primary productivity.

Since we are dependent upon foreign oil and are likely to be so for the foreseeable future, we should make that dependency a prominent part of our national economic and energy policy. We should buy oil from all the major suppliers of oil, favoring Mexico and Canada, of course. We should do everything we can to develop the Oil in Russia and other now independent republics of the former Soviet Union, and we should be come a preferred customer in exchange for offering them food. Then we should use our political influence to stabilize the price of oil.

The Gulf War temporarily raised the price of oil to about $40 a barrel. As the tension went out Of the Middle East, the price dropped back to the $20's. We know from long experience that nothing can keep the price of oil from falling, and we know that the falling price of oil creates all kinds of problems. We should simply acknowledge the fact that we are oil importers and bend all our efforts to keep the price of oil stable. We should get together with other oil consuming nations and negotiate the world price of oil. (The Organization of Petroleum, Importing Countries, OPIC.) Furthermore, we should be willing to put our military strength behind the effort. For those who claim that the free market should determine the price of oil, the simple answer is that the free market in oil depresses the price of oil and leads to war. The long answer is that oil economics has few if any independent variables. For the free market to work, it has to be beyond the influence of those who would manipulate it. For oil, as with diamonds, that condition may never exist.

The Arabs have a lot of oil. There is enough oil in the Middle East to keep the industrial world going until the year 3000. The Saudis and OPEC have to manipulate the production of oil to keep the price low enough so that alternatives to oil are not economically viable, yet high enough to make a lot of money. (It still only costs about 75 cents to produce a barrel of oil.) Twenty dollars a barrel is a good price for oil and our national economic and foreign policy should be to stabilize a barrel's cost around that price, adjusted only for inflation. The utilization of alternative energy is a bonus. When we finally get a national energy policy we should want to look into the following five systems.

(1) Direct solar capture. Right now in experiments, films will capture photons and produce electricity that seems to be competitive with either coal- or oil-fired generation of electricity.

(2) Low head hydro. The high head hydro sites are all in use, except for a few we chose not to use. The Bureau of Reclamation, which built most of the large dams in the United States, envisions itself in other business related to conservation because there are no large dams left for it to build. However, there are zillions of small dams to build all over the place. All that's required is the mass production of low head hydro equipment and an enlightened policy, that fosters cogeneration. The Soil Conservation Service (SCS) should be the lead agency in low head hydro since low head hydro requires the construction of a lot of small dams, which the SCS already encourages, and which would result in reduced soil erosion, this agency's main business.

(3) Wind generation. In California, wind farms are producing a significant amount of electricity. Some of them are public, a lot of them are private. In the Great Plains of the United States there is a very great potential for wind generation as there are thousands of square miles of public lands suitable for windmills—huge windmills. Development of large wind farms should be the next project for the Bureau of Reclamation. Fortunately, the agency already knows how to start such a project because it built and tested a 4-megawatt prototype windmill before Ronald Reagan gave us a non-policy for energy policy.

(4) Coal, coal tar, and oil shale. We have much more coal than we have oil, but it's a little more difficult to handle and burned raw, as most of it is, it is a terrible pollutant. What the United States really needs is to use our coal to develop a carbo-chemical industry similar to our petrochemical industry. From a ton of coal we can get roughly two barrels of liquid fuel and many byproducts. Much of our coal is in the eastern United States where lots of water and people would be available to develop the industry. There is also much coal in the West, and it is in the public domain. Unfortunately, in the West we have a resource give-away policy initiated by Interior Secretary James Watt that clearly is not in the interest of the citizens sovereign. While U.S. coal policy today is uncertain, it represents a vast potential for energy utilization. Additionally, there is the question of oil shale and coal tar. As a great deal of water and energy are needed to extract the oil from oil shale, there might actually be a net energy loss in such operations. However, we could look into a hybrid program that somehow linked the use of our solar resource (using huge solar furnaces) and oil shale to learn whether such a program might be of value to us.

(5) National energy conservation. Jimmy Carter started national energy conservation, but it was abandoned by Reagan and Bush. Nevertheless, lots of individuals and businesses went ahead with the concept, putting it into practice simply because it was profitable to do so.

Projections of electricity consumption made in the 70's had to be abandoned in the 80's because of energy conservation we learned that there is more oil to be discovered in energy conservation than in all the energy exploration programs we as a nation might have. Energy conservation as a source of oil dwarfs the Alaska Wildlife Range's reserves. The problem with energy conservation, as Reagan and Bush have seen it, is that everybody benefits, not just a few large corporations and their shareholders.

The States by themselves cannot do the job. National energy policy needs a Federal Government that understands its constitutional obligations and leads the nation. The Civil War solved the States' Rights problem. Therefore, it is immoral to refight the war in the political arena of the 1990's. If our current Federal leadership had spent as much time in trying to unite and lead the nation as it has spent in trying to divide us on race, school prayer, the death penalty, gun control, and patriotism merely to win elections and to continue to divide the country, we would have solved, most of our energy problems by now. The most important actions we can start right now are stabilizing the price of Middle East oil by using it; adopting an energy policy that includes solar, wind, and low head hydro; and fostering nationwide energy conservation. Exploring for and developing new sources of oil, while romantic and extremely popular with a few individuals, in the short run are not viable alternatives to a national energy policy.

Who would benefit from the development of the Alaska Wildlife Range? We know that companies connected to oil matters—the developers, shippers and transporters, refiners, and retailers—would all benefit. The biggest benefits would go to the oil companies, of course, and some of the profit would trickle down to the stockholders. There is big money to be made here and the oil companies represent a potent lobby. Also, the State of Alaska would benefit. As I write, the State of Alaska supports 80% of its governmental activity with oil royalties. The people of Alaska benefit because the State has a policy of saving some of the oil money in an Alaska Fund, a trust fund from which the State distributes some of the money directly to its people. I think the per capita distributions are wrong because the State makes and then takes capital in the form of money from oil that nature took millions of years to form, gives it to Alaskans, and the recipients of the money spend it without recourse to its renewability. If Alaska were to put all its oil money into trust funds and spend only the renewable income (interest) from those trusts, distribution of the interest (as opposed to principal) would be fine as the principle of renewability. would be preserved.

Should we develop the Alaska Wildlife Range for the short-term benefit of a few people at this time, even if they are very powerful people in our society? Or should we look to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and see that the Alaska Wildlife Range and all the rest of the public domain should be developed to the common benefit of the people of the United States; as their unalienable right to an equal share of the commonwealth?

The first question we should ask about the Alaska Wildlife Range is, "How would the Range's development advance our national interest, as opposed to personal or private interests of corporations and individuals?" Secondly we should ask, "How would the development of the Alaska Wildlife Range benefit all citizens sovereign?" In the absence of an energy policy, the Congress should not allow the Administration, to develop any of the energy resources of the public domain, let alone the Alaska Wildlife Range.

...Ted Sudia...

© Copyright 1991
Institute for domestic Tranquility