James,
My Cobra does not use near the gasoline than the racecar circuit, thus I am not contributing to the unnecessary reliance on Middle East
Oil. Dragsters idle at 1 gal per second and the monster cars / tractor pulls that consume 2 gal per second. I enjoy driving my gashog Cobra, and I am also with you concerning the waste usage of
oil products that force the US to rely more upon foreign
oil than necessary (such as power plants and factories), but completely ruining the ANWR environment for both human and wildlife is not the answer. (No impact, yea, right! Think of the infrastructure that would have to be put in place to support the construction, mining, maintenance, and transportation. At least 2 years of creating roads, pipeline, offices, and such even before starting mining that area...)
In the year 2000, over 18,745,000 barrels of oil is consumed by the USA each day on average, of which 7,745,000 barrels were imported each day. Thus, the foreign oil import is roughly 2,829,000,000 per year. The Department of the Interior reports that the total oil reserve estimate in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is at most 13,800,000,000 barrels of oil, of which 3,570,000,000 is attainable on the North Slope and 4,800,000,000 barrels in the Coastal Plain.
(See
http://www.xist.org/charts/ixch.htm and
http://www.anwr.org/features/estimate.htm).
If we completely mined all the oil in the Alaska Coastal Plain (which cannot be done), that would only extend the USA less than 2 years of not depending on foreign oil, assuming the USA did not increase its consumption of oil.
Is 2 years of oil worth losing one of the very few remaining untouched prestine wildlife areas? I think we ought to negotiate mining the Caspian Sea in the Soviet side where it is said there is more oil than the total combined reserves in the Middle East.
Later,
Alan (now off my soapbox)