NCPA: Environmentalists Show Hypocrisy on Oil Exploration

2/19/2004

From: Sean Tuffnell of National Center for Policy Analysis, 800-859-1154, stuffnell@ncpa.org

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 -- The following was Released today by the National Center for Policy Analysis:

Seven liberal environmental litigation groups have filed suit in a U.S. District Court to stop the federal government from accessing oil in the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR). According to National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett, this action lays bare the hypocrisy of the environmental-left.

"The environmental-left has long argued that oil exploration in the Alaskan Natural Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was not needed because the NPR was nearby," said Burnett. "Now they are attempting to prevent us from using the NPR. If successful in shutting down NPR, will they reverse course and support ANWR?"

Founded in 1923 by President William Harding as the Naval Petroleum Reserve, and renamed the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska in 1976, NPR's 20 million acres were set aside specifically for critical oil development -- not as a wildlife refuge. Outside of ANWR, NPR holds the greatest reserves of oil and natural gas in the North Slope. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates between 5.9 billion and 13.2 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, with a mean estimate of 9.3 billion barrels and 10s of trillions of feet of natural gas. Allowing development of the entire northwest planning area would leave 40 percent of the Indiana-sized reserve undeveloped.

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