(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - More adults in the United States want to allow oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 50 per cent of respondents favour the idea, while 43 per cent are opposed.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—located in northeastern Alaska—covers almost 80,000 square kilometres. The area was protected in 1960 during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, and is home to more than 230 animal species.

In 2004, U.S. president George W. Bush proposed opening less than 10 per cent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration. According to the White House, the area could potentially provide more than one million barrels of oil each day.

On Jun. 18, Bush once again voiced support for oil exploration in Alaska, saying, "We should expand American oil production by permitting exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. When ANWR was created in 1980, Congress specifically reserved a portion for energy development. In 1995, Congress passed legislation allowing oil production in this small fraction of ANWR’s 19 million acres. With a drilling footprint of less than 2,000 acres—less than one-tenth of one per cent of this distant Alaskan terrain—America could produce an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil. That is roughly the equivalent of two decades of imported oil from Saudi Arabia. Yet my predecessor vetoed this bill."

On Jul. 3, Republican Pennsylvania congressman Bill Shuster dismissed environmental concerns, saying, "You’ve got to get the real story out there that ANWR does not look like the Sierra Club commercials they put on TV. It’s not the snow-capped peaks with the beautiful meadow with elk bounding through or across a stream. It doesn’t look like that. It’s almost a moonscape. It’s fairly barren. (...) There is wildlife there but it’s not a significant population."

Polling Data

Would you favour or oppose allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska?

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 2,004 American adults, conducted from Jun. 18 to Jun. 29, 2008. Margin of error is 2.5 per cent.

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