Radio host Glenn Beck recently interviewed Congressman Steve King (R-IA) and discussed the need to develop new sources of oil. Here is the article and quotes by Congressman King:

"I flew over [ANWR] and I also went down on the ground, I talked to the Eskimos there that want to drill.  It's 19.6 million acres.  There's not a single tree in that entire area, not for 700 miles from where they want to drill for oil."

GLENN:  So tell me about the ANWR.  What did you find out when you threw over the ANWR and you went up to check things out?

KING:  I flew over and I also went down on the ground, I talked to the Eskimos there that want to drill.  It's 19.6 million acres.  There's not a single tree in that entire area, not for 700 miles from where they want to drill for oil.  This is a carbon copy of the ecosystem that we drilled in the north slope of Alaska in the early Seventies.

GLENN:  Didn't they say that was going to cause all kinds of ecological problems in the north slope?

CALLER:  I think it was because the caribou herd quadrupled than what it was in 1970.  They all said of course the caribou multiplied because they shot the wolves.  Now they didn't have any guns up there.  I was signed up.  It's just they will contrive any argument.  If there ever was a safe place and a good place for this to be oil, it's up in ANWR.  There is no caribou herd in the ANWR region.  There are a few musk oxen, I saw a few white birds.  They are going to do fine whether we drill or whether we don't.  So if the question I ask, it goes off of the question of if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, did it make any noise?  If we drill environmentally friendly wells in the ANWR and no one is there to see them, did it damage the scenery?  That's the question.  And are we going to starve this nation for energy because somebody is afraid that they will have to look at a drill rig up there in ANWR.  By the way, when they get the drilling done, they put submersible pumps in.  You don't see a pump jack above the ground.  You just see a little workover pad that's a square patch of rock that they will go out and pull the pump out if it needs work in the wintertime.  It couldn't be any more environmentally friendly.  Dennis Kucinich couldn't identify the north slope oil fields today.  They would be a lot harder to identify in ANWR.

Read the whole ANWR interview at glennbeck.com