The oil industry and its allies in Congress have been trying for decades to pass legislation to open the Arctic Refuge to oil development. Each time energy prices rise, big oil interests and their political friends repeat the misleading mantra: Drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, and our national energy problems will be solved.

What Would Development Mean?
The oil industry claims it can develop the Arctic Refuge in an "environmentally sensitive" manner. They point to Prudhoe Bay. Yet there, oil and toxic chemical spills have numbered more than 400 a year. The price Americans would pay just to find out if oil even exists is unthinkable:

• Hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines leading to dozens of oil fields, blocking the free movement of wildlife. Toxic wastes leaking from pipelines onto the fragile tundra, contaminating wetlands.
• Rivers and streambeds - key habitat for wildlife - stripped of millions of tons of gravel for road, airstrips, and drillpad construction. Living quarters for thousands of workers, and air pollution rivaling that of a small city.
• Smoky oil flares extending for miles across the arctic horizon. Helicopters, cargo planes, dump trucks and bulldozers; the sights and sounds of heavy equipment would at times be almost constant.
• A now pristine Arctic wilderness would be forever violated, threatening the migrations and life cycles of unique wildlife that inhabit the region-and threatening the very way of life of the Gwich'in people, who depend on the caribou who migrate each year to the coastal plain of the refuge.

What the Oil Companies Don't Tell You
The claim made by the oil industry and its political allies that oil reserves in the Arctic Refuge could make a meaningful dent in America's energy requirements is simply not backed up by the facts. Here's the truth: Drilling in the Arctic Refuge would do very little, if anything, to affect our energy prices or security:

• The amount of oil that the U.S. Geological Survey estimates could be recovered from the Arctic Refuge would amount to less than a six-month supply for American consumers. Even less natural gas occurs under the Refuge relative to U.S. demand.
• At no time would oil from the refuge be expected to amount to more than 2 percent of U.S. demand. It will take 7 to 10 years for any oil to make it to market. 95% of the Alaska's North Slope is already available for oil and gas exploration and development.
• Even if the highest predictions of oil in the refuge were to come true, oil from beneath the refuge would provide no more than a blip on the global oil market and would therefore have a negligible impact on the price of oil. Nor would drilling for oil in the refuge address our country's long-term energy problem.