The debate over the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve is seen as a choice between protecting the environment and expanding our oil supply. This is a fallacy. Drilling in ANWR will not increase our oil supply.
How could that be? Look at the whole chessboard. Jimmy Smits on The West Wing asked the rhetorical question: What country sells the most oil to the U.S.?
The answer is not Saudi Arabia, but Canada, which shipped 1.6 billion barrels of oil from January to August of this year, according to the Department of Energy. Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela were close behind, with Nigeria fifth with 1.2 billion barrels.
Of these countries, Canada is our closest ally and our most important trading partner. It is also of the world's most stable democracies -- certainly more stable than Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria.
Canada has 31 times the reserves of ANWR.
ANWR: 5.7 billion barrels
Canada: 178.8 billion barrels
One could conclude we will be increasing our imports of Canadian oil. That is unless...
Tomorrow, we'll look at how drilling in ANWR will affect our relations with Canada. Tommywonk thanks Bill Detwiler for providing the inspiration and a great deal of research and analysis for this series.