ADN and AP by Mary Pemberton.  Rep. Edward Markey (Photo) on Wednesday reintroduced a bill to designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a wilderness area. If successful, the move would put the refuge — and its estimated 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil — beyond the reach of oil companies perhaps forever.  (Comment:  While Congressman Markey is a raving lunatic who blindly supports every crackpot, environmentally extreme idea, that doesn’t excuse the AP from producing a biased report.  First, the writer editorializes a news story by creating the specter of the hero, Markey, putting sacred ANWR out of the ‘reach’ of the oil companies.  Markey’s end game would actually remove valuable jobs, resources, national security benefits and economic recovery from the reach of the American consumer.  Later in the story, the writer quotes Markey, "If we don’t enact permanent protections for the refuge, oil companies and their allies in Congress will continue to push for shortsighted plans to drill our last pristine wild places," Markey said. "Rather than drilling in the Arctic refuge, we should be using safer, cleaner forms of energy made here in America to create a refuge from foreign oil."  The writer gives Markey a free ride on this pronouncement without balancing it with a quote from the American Petroleum Institute, Governor Sean Parnell, or the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation.  At the least the writer could have determined from the government’s Energy Information Agency proof that not developing ANWR will not result in America using less oil; it will just result in America using less American oil.  Markey’s efforts over the years have thus outsourced millions of American jobs and our national wealth overseas, contributed to debasement of our currency, threatened our national security and been a leading cause of our slow economic recovery.  Still later in the article, this AP writer quotes Cindy Shogan executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League — again, with no balancing commenter.  The writer concludes her article with a final salvo in support of her environmentalist activist friends.  She observes in this ‘parting shot’ that, "Last month, more than 80 members of Congress, 170 scientists, some 300 businesses and organizations and 22 religious organizations signed letters encouraging President Obama to designate ANWR’s coastal plain a national monument. That, too, if granted, would put the refuge beyond the reach of oil companies."  Again, she paints the specter of the greedy oil companies reaching for defenseless ANWR oil instead of needy American consumers reaching for energy independence, jobs, wealth and national security.  The irony in all this, is that environmental values would be affected not one iota.  Drilling would occur in the winter when all migratory species are absent.  When production begins, the gravel pads and oil company enforcement of rules would enhance the size of the Porcupine Caribou herd as Prudhoe Bay operations between 1968 and today have nearly three times doubled the size of the Central Arctic Caribou herd.  The great economic treasure in ANWR, in short, can happen in a way that protects the environment while producing ANWR’s billions of barrels of oil from a pad no bigger than Dulles Airport in a national refuge of 19 million acres.  

Finally, we are very sad that the AP writer did not even mention that at a US Fish and Wildlife Service hearing in Anchorage this past fall about 90 percent of the testimony from Alaskans supported environmentally responsible development of 2,000 acres out of 19,000.000 acres.  Not a mention.

Congressman Markey and the Associated Press owe the consumers of America apologies for misrepresenting the truth.  -dh

 

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