The bait-and-switch on Alaska energy.

• Author: Murkowski, Lisa
• Position: ENERGY

An alliance of environmental activists and Democratic politicians has spent decades blocking the efforts of Alaskans to access the rich energy resources of our state.

When Alaskans wanted to open the 1002 area of ANWR to exploration and production, opponents of progress stymied our efforts with fear-mongering and obstructionism. In so doing, they frequently pointed to the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in the northwest corner of the state as a preferable location for drilling. This, they argued, would protect the coastal plain of ANWR.

But now that the focus has actually swung to the NPR-A, this same obstructionist alliance is supporting a plan to greatly restrict oil and gas exploration in the petroleum reserve.

This is a classic bait-and-switch. If opponents simply don't want Alaska to produce any energy, they should be honest enough to say so.

A land management plan billed by the Interior Department as "opening" half of NPR-A would actually close oil and gas activity in half the Reserve. It would also make it very difficult to construct the pipelines and other infrastructure necessary to get oil from the Chukchi and Beaufort seas to the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

The environmental community is even trying to rename the petroleum reserve as the "Western Arctic Reserve." The name itself declares their intention to wage war against responsible resource development in Alaska.

If there is one thing that should offend us all, it is America's dependence on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. We import 4.5 million barrels of oil from OPEC each and every day. Our own continent, however, has been blessed with vast oil and natural gas resources that if responsibly developed could free ourselves from relying on imports from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Libya, Iraq and other familiar hotspots.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the United States has 220 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil and condensates. Other estimates range far higher. The Mexican government estimates its own technically recoverable resources to be 31 billion barrels, while Canada boasts some 175 billion barrels in proven reserves alone.

Alaska will necessarily play a large role in this energy revolution. NPR-A holds nearly 900 million barrels of oil, along with over 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The Chukchi and Beaufort seas may hold an additional 23 billion barrels of...