15 billion barrels is "six months worth"? Arthur Andersen teach you math?


Nobody except Rush Limbaugh and George Bush actually believes there are
15 BBO recoverable from ANWR.

USGS predicts with a 95% certainty that there are at least 1.9 BBO.
USGS predicts with a 50% certainty that we could recover as many as 5.3
BBO.
The liklihood of recovering 15 BBO is probably a fraction of one
percent, and those are pretty long odds upon which to challenge another
person's math.

*If* we got the 5.3 BBO, that would be closer to nine months' supply
than six, but the odds or getting that much oil or more are only 50%.
If we factor in the number of years it would take before any oil flowed
from ANWR and consider the annual increase in fuel consumption, 5.3BBO
might actually be closer to a six month supply.

Even if we used the propaganda claim of 15 BBO as a basis- that would
only
satisfy the current US crude oil appetite for 24 months. ANWR doesn't
"fix" the oil crisis, but it might postpone the day of reckoning long
enough for some extremely old folks to die off before we all pay the
piper.

In the good old days, this problem would have been solved at the
congressional level by a compromise between the liberals and the
conservatives. The conservatives would have agreed to some legislation
that encouraged fuel economy and conservation and in return the
moderates and liberals would have agreed to let them dig up ANWR and
extract the oil. That is unlikely to happen again any time soon, as
experience has now shown that an incoming right wing president has no
difficulty at all in setting aside the "pesky" environmental laws
passed by the people during previous
years. If our elected representatives said, "It's OK to dig up ANWR,
but we are going to ask the American people to use the oil more wisely
by encouraging less wasteful and more efficient consumption" just about
the time the first drop of oil appeared on the market the POTUS could
get out his pen and wipe out the environmental portion of the agreement.