At the outset, let me say on of the biggest motivating factors for me in deciding to be “pro-drilling” in ANWR is because of the huge amount of revenue we give to foreign nations in regards to oil. Many of these nations either support terrorists, back the beliefs of terrorists, have a hostile nature towards the US, or disagree with key positions to me as a Christian and as a US Citizen. Many times it’s a combo of the above answers. Thus, we support their belief system financially.
If we were getting oil from Israel or Mexico or some nation friendly to us, it’d be different.
In addition to this, the money we pour into other nations is money we are not pouring into our own. Thus we hurt our economy.
Additional arguments that helped me to decide to be pro-drilling in ANWR:
-revenue would be $150-200 billion lifetime (the North Slope in Alaska, which we’ve been drilling for some time, gave $50 billion in revenue over 27 years; each state was impacted by this money)
-250,000-730,000 jobs created (note: vast majority would not reside in Alaska on the oil rigs/drills/platforms)
-the potential for a gigantic discovery (like other countries have made in the past) best lies in ANWR; we could be sitting on a 100 year supply (100 miles west of ANWR is America’s largest oil field)
-once we started drilling, price-wise it’d be a simple supply/demand model in terms of the worldwide price of oil. If we introduce a new supply and it’s a large enough amount, oil prices will come down (more supply + same demand = lower prices)
-current oil fields/oil areas have growth population in the animals; the caribou (reindeer) have grown from 3,000-32,000 in these regions (including Prudhoe Bay where pipelines exist)
-If ANWR was a state, it’d be larger than ten other states in the US. That’s a lot of ground to simply “shut” the door on.
-most of the area is uninhabitable; if you see pictures of it, the pictures look pretty bleak; it’s not the “beautiful” part of Alaska that is normally shown