{"id":21785,"date":"2020-08-23T03:54:59","date_gmt":"2020-08-23T03:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=21785"},"modified":"2020-08-27T09:59:46","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T09:59:46","slug":"trump-greenlights-drilling-in-the-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-but-will-oil-companies-show-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/trump-greenlights-drilling-in-the-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-but-will-oil-companies-show-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump greenlights drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but will oil companies show up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott L. Montgomery<\/a>, University of Washington<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Trump administration has announced that it is opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge<\/a> to oil and gas development \u2013 the latest twist in a decades-long battle over the fate of this remote area. Its timing is truly terrible.<\/p>\n

Low oil prices, a pandemic-driven recession and looming elections add up to highly unfavorable conditions for launching expensive drilling operations. In the longer term, the climate crisis and an ongoing shift to a lower-carbon economy raise big questions about future oil demand.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve researched the U.S. energy industry<\/a> for more than 20 years. As I see it, conservative Republicans have backed oil and gas production in ANWR since the 1980s for two overriding reasons. First, to increase domestic oil production and reduce dependence on \u201cforeign oil,\u201d a euphemism for imports from OPEC countries. This argument now is largely dead, thanks to the fracking revolution<\/a>, which has greatly expanded U.S. oil and gas production.<\/p>\n

The other motive for drilling in ANWR, I believe, is to score a major, precedent-setting victory over government policies that prioritize conservation over energy production and environmental advocacy groups that have fought for years to protect ANWR as \u201cone of the finest examples of wilderness left on Earth<\/a>.\u201d Capturing ANWR and transforming it into a locus of fossil fuel extraction would be a massive physical and symbolic triumph for politicians who believe that resource extraction is the highest use of public lands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President Trump seems to understand this, based on his recent comment that \u201cANWR is a big deal that Ronald Reagan couldn\u2019t get done and nobody could get done<\/a>.\u201d But global, national and oil industry circumstances are overwhelmingly arrayed against Trump getting it done.<\/p>\n