Friday, August 26, 2005

Time to drill

With oil prices hitting record highs, oil supply from foreign sources not meeting demand, and gas prices at $2.55/gallon, it appears that the time for sitting on our oil reserves in Alaska has passed, and the time to tap into it is here. The environmentalists will not doubt throw a fit about the prospect of drilling for oil in Alaska. Most of them have never even been there. Alaska is 656,425 square miles of mostly nothing. The total population density of the state is less than one person per square mile. If you exclude Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau there is less than one person per three square miles. An oil drilling operation the size of Rhode Island would occupy less than a quarter of a percent of the land in Alaska, leaving 99.75% for the occasional human and all the animals. Surely we should continue to develop more fuel efficient cars and fuel cell technology to generate energy from hydrogen, but in the mean time, let the drilling begin!

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