Reichert Lets Down Home Team
A Man That Needs to Hear From YOU!
Congressman Reichert of the Washington State’s 8th district has consistently voted against responsible exploration of the 10-02 Area of ANWR. He does so using highly unfounded and emotion based arguments regarding a belief that development cannot happen with concern for the environment. The position of Reichert is perhaps the most hypocritical of all anti-ANWR Congressman in that his district directly benefits the most from Alaskan Arctic oil development. Reichert’s district is the site of the Cherry Point Oil Refinery which is 100% reliant on Alaskan North Slope oil.
The refinery indeed was retrofitted directly to receive Alaskan oil and every year processes millions of barrels of Alaskan crude into petroleum products. The money, the jobs, the infrastructure all remain in Reichert’s district. To hit the point home harder, half of Alaskan oil is daily refined in Washington state, and nearly 4 BILLION DOLLARS worth of investment have been made in Washington directly from oil development in the Arctic! Today there are over 300 Washington state vendors who conduct business in Alaskan oil fields. A considerable portion of Reichert’s constituents directly benefit from having both sound jobs and money pumped into their district solely due to Alaskan oil.
Cut out Alaskan oil and Reichert would see a massive economic and social slump in back home. Reichert’s blinkered, stick-in-the-mud, attitude and sad let down of his own people is even more evident when one knows that both the Seattle and Tacoma Chambers of Commerce, two of the foremost and active business Chambers in America, fully endorse responsible development of the 10-02 Area of ANWR. Following this piece is an article written by the Seattle Chamber’s Jim Keough on how Washington and Reichert’s home team have benefited from Alaskan oil. It is a very interesting and illuminating read considering Reichert’s unsupportive position of his people.
Congressman Reichert is one of a handful of Representatives who can ensure the passage of necessary ANWR legislation in Congress. It is believed that there will be a vote on ANWR in Congress before Wednesday next week and we strongly urge you to contact Congressman Reichert and voice your concern for his stanch opposition to environmentally responsible development of the 10-02 Area of ANWR. Contact Congressman Reichert’s Energy staffer Michael Shields to tell of your concern for the Congressman’s position.
michael.sheilds@mail.house.gov
Congressman Reichert needs to know where you stand on this critical issue. The message is short and clear, "Please support the opening of ANWR.
Here is contact information Congressman Reichert's office:
District Office -- 206.275.3438
DC Office -- 202.225.7761
FAX DC -- 202.225.4282
You can also send an email by going to Congressman Reichert's webpage at http://www.house.gov/reichert/IMA/issue_subscribe.htm
The following is an opinion piece written by Jim Keough who is the co-chair of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s Alaska Committee
Explore ANWR responsibly
By Jim Keough
The energy challenges facing the United States are multifaceted and numerous. As such, they require creative strategies, tough choices and balanced tradeoffs within the framework of a comprehensive national energy policy. No one believes that opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to environmentally responsible oil and natural gas exploration will solve all of our challenges, but it can sure be a key component of a broader solution.
ANWR is a 19.8 million-acre region in the remote northeast corner of Alaska, between the Canadian border and the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which specifically set aside 1.5 million acres within ANWR to be studied for their oil and gas development potential. In 1987, the U.S. Interior Department completed its study, which concluded that between 5.6 billion and 16.7 billion barrels worth lies beneath the coastal plain. The study recommended to Congress that the coastal plain should be opened to oil and natural gas development.
Let me put these numbers into perspective. ANWR is about half the size of the state of Washington. What is being discussed is opening 1.5 million acres of tundra in the coastal plain. The remaining 18 million acres - often the subject of beautiful pictures depicting the Alaska wilderness - will never be touched for oil or gas exploration of any kind.
If oil is found and this small area within ANWR is opened for exploration, the "footprint" of development will be very small - less than 2,000 acres. This is smaller than Sea-Tac Airport, and approximately 0.01 percent of the land within ANWR. The remaining 99.99 percent, or 18,998,000 acres, will remain unaffected.
The Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce wanted to know how much oil and gas could be expected if exploration in ANWR were allowed. Government, industry and independent geologists with experience in oil and gas agreed that ANWR is the largest potentially productive unexplored onshore basin in the United States. The Department of Energy in a recent report predicted that, if ANWR were to be opened, production from that area would range from 650,000 to 1.9 million barrels a day, comparable to the historical production of North America's largest oil field, Prudhoe Bay. That's enough production to replace current imports from Iraq for 40 years.
Another concern the Chamber had was the effect of exploration on the wildlife in ANWR. Similar questions were asked in the 1970s, during debate over opening Prudhoe Bay to oil production. We now know what happened there. When construction started, there were 3,000 caribou among the herd at Prudhoe Bay; this past year there were over 27,000. Oil production and wildlife can co-exist if development is conducted properly.
What about the environmental risks? Over the past 20 years, there have been many technological advances in oil production, which dramatically reduce the environmental impact of oil exploration and production. If neighboring Prudhoe Bay were developed today, its footprint would be 64-percent smaller. Roads are no longer built of gravel; they are built of ice during the winter months and then melt during the brief summer thaw. This leaves very little impact on the tundra. New drilling techniques allow drills to move sideways through the earth, allowing for one drill site to recover oil and gas from within a five-mile radius.
Environmental damage from spills or other accidents is far less likely to occur in the U.S., under the watchful eyes of federal and state regulators and where technology is more advanced than almost any other oil-producing nation. The demand for oil and petroleum products will continue to be strong for years to come and the supply will need to come from somewhere. If more oil is produced in countries with less-stringent regulations, we could very well witness another tragedy like that in the coastal waters of Brazil earlier this year.
What about our nation's energy independence? Today, the United States gets almost 60 percent of its oil from foreign sources. By 2020, projections show that number will hit 70 percent. Such reliance on foreign sources for a vital energy source is not in our best interest. Until the day that hydrogen fuel cells are powering our homes and cars, we will need oil as a source of energy, and having a viable domestic supply simply makes sense.
The Puget Sound region stands to gain a great deal if the coastal plain of ANWR is opened. In 1995, the Greater Seattle and Tacoma-Pierce County Chambers of Commerce conducted a study that determined that 90,000 Puget Sound jobs (the size of Bellevue's workforce) are a result of our connection with Alaska. Estimates show that 12,000 new jobs will be created in Washington if exploration is allowed in the coastal plain. Tool and machine manufacturing, transportation, software production and legal and accounting services will all be positively impacted as a result of the opening of a small fraction of ANWR.
Like many in our region, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce had questions about opening ANWR to responsible exploration. But we listened to the evidence and we know that a strong Alaska is vital to a strong Washington. For all of these reasons, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce recently reaffirmed its longstanding support for responsible oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Jim Keough is co-chair of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce's Alaska Committee. When he is not volunteering with the Chamber, he is business development and governmental relations manager of CSX Lines.