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10 Million Jobs: The High Cost of Saving ANWR
Guest Column | By Raymond Kraft | June 5, 2008
At
$130 a barrel, the real,hiddencost of the liberals' refusal to open up
the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)and the oil resources off
our coasts is 10 million jobs.
Ten million jobs for
middle-class,working-class Americansthat are being "outsourced" to OPEC
daily, evenas the Senate debates bizarrely complex "carbon cap and
trade"legislationthat wouldcharge American businesses (most of them)
that produce carbon emissions for the right to stay in business; then
let those that reduce their carbon emissions sell or "trade" their
carbon credits to other businesses that need to grow but will use more
energy in the process. The effect of this fiasco will be to impose a
new tax on all businesses andon allbusiness growth, which will stunt
business growth, economic growth, personal income growth, job
growth,and tax receipts.
It's intended to fix the biggest
non-problem in history, human-induced global warming - the fraud that
has made Al Gore a centimillionaire.If we look at the real climate
data, the long term temperature trends show us that the climate is 0.4
degrees warmer than 1,000 years ago, and 3 degrees cooler than 8,000
years ago (http://www.globalwarmingart.com/).The
Hadley Center for Climate Prediction charts the global temperature
falling 0.4 degrees from 1988 to 1992, then rising 0.8 degrees from
1992 to peak in1998, then falling 0.7 degrees by January 2008.
The climate has been changing as long as there has been a climate. It's not our fault, and we can't stop it.
But I digress.
Currently,
the U.S. imports roughly 25% of its oil, 5.4 million barrels a day,
from OPEC, mostly fromSaudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria. At $130 a
barrel, we are exporting over$700 million dollars a day to OPEC. $1.4
billion every two days. $256 billion a year.That's more than one-third
of the US trade deficit of $720 billion. And that's why the value of
the US dollar is falling.Not the only reason, but a big reason.
For
20 years, environmentalists, Democrats, and a few misguided Republicans
have been busy keeping Big Oil out of ANWR and out of the oil fields on
the Coastal Shelves, where there are an estimated 635 trillion cubic
feet of natural gas, enough to heat 60 million American homes for a
century, and 115 billion barrels of oil, enough to replace 100% of the
oil we now buy from OPEC for 21 years. At $130 a barrel,that would cut
out trade deficit by $5.4 trillion over 21 years.
Yes, $5.4 trillion, which is enough to pay the entire federal budget for nearly two years.
Critics
say that opening up 2,000 acres of the 19,049,236 acre Alaska National
Wildlife Refuge for oil production would do little to bring down the
price of gas, and that may be so. But it would add jobs by the
millions, to the U.S. economy. With an estimated 10 billion barrels,
ANWR could produce 1 million barrels a day for 30 years.At $130 a
barrel, that's $130 million a day. That's $47 billion a year.
A
million dollars creates 40 jobs at an average pay of$50,000 a year.$130
million creates 5,200 jobs at $50,000 a year.$47 billion
creates1,880,000 new jobs for American workers at $50,000 a year.At
current oil prices,by keeping ANWRoff limits, Democrats reduce
employment for the middle-class, working-class Americans they pretend
to care about by 1,880,000 jobs. And that's enough jobs to cut the
unemployment rate from 5% to 4%.
But what if we open up the
Coastal Shelves for oil production, too?And produce 5.4 million barrels
a day, to replace all the oil we buy from OPEC?
That would
re-invest the $256 billion a year we now deport to OPEC back into the
U.S. economy. And that would fund 10,152,000 new jobs for working-class
Americans, jobsthat pay an average of $50,000 a year.And that's enough
new jobs to reduce the unemployment rate, in theory, from 5% to
0%.Zero. And that is the high cost of keeping ANWR
"pristine."We can lay the blame for 100% of America's unemployment at
the feet of the Democrats, liberal Republicans and environmentalists
who keep ANWR and the coastal oil reserves off limits.
Put
another way, every year that we continue buying 5.4 million barrels of
oil a day from OPEC, we "outsource" more than ten million American jobs
to OPEC. If politicians really cared about working-class Americans,
they would be rushing to open up ANWR and other oil and gas reserves on
federal lands as quickly as possible to create ten million new jobs,
revalue the falling dollar, stimulate the economy, and write a
declaration of independence from OPEC.
But, they don't.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Raymond S. Kraft is an attorney in Northern California. He can be reached at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
10 Comments | Post a Comment
USA has more than enough oil in ground to supply all its energy needs. Oil companies have their agenda in allowing Oil cartel countries to have their own way. Cartels are supposed to be illegal. Back in past electric cars wee good but oil companies shut them off. USA has one of cheapest petrol prices in Western world but could have more jobs if they built their own oil rigs & refineries in their own country.
I wish I could print this and put it on all the cars I see parked at WalMart. We need another revolution in this country to free us from the lies we constantly get from the main stream media and our politicians in Washington.
Thank you for getting the word out, the true word.
I am not against drilling in Alaska but
oil companies are international conglmoerates.
How exactly does it help us if Texaco, or some other international corporation, drills in Alaska?
We do have quite a few refineries. I didn’t know we imported refined gasoline - I thought we imported crude oil. Am I wrong?
It doesn’t seem the problem is lack of oil, it’s lack of cheap oil. So far, around here, I haven’t seen any non pumping pumps. Has any stations run out of gas?
Again, I have no problem with drilling in Alaska, but could this high price of oil be so people would be pressured to allow those international (Not American only) corporations to drill in Alaska?
I’m happy to be educated, but you know we might know more about our situation if rather than the countries of import, we knew the corporation of import.
Does it matter where British Petroleum gets it’s crude oil? Does it matter where Texaco (heavy Saudi investment there) gets it’s oil?
In that vein, will it matter to the US if Texaco or British Petroleum gets its oil from Alaska, Angola, or Saudi Arabia?
I sometimes get Emails urging me to invest in companies drilling in USA but there are no news about them which makes me wonder. Iran will be major source as to why oil prices will get higher, most panicky people in USA are NYSE oil commodity buyers. They are ones who started it off so petrol prices are so high because of them.
I read the article again, and it really doesn’t hold together for me.
It supposes that all these jobs will be new jobs. WE already have quite a bit of refining going on - whether it be imported or domestic oil. We also have quite a transportation/distribution system for our oil and gas. That means many jobs are already in place and simply replacing foreign oil with domestic oil (if there is any distinction) wouldn’t necessarily create new jobs.
Then there is the supposing that all these jobs will be filled by US citizens - not illegal aliens, HB workers, or foreign employees of the international corporations.
If we have been paying any attention to what has been happening in this country in the last few decades, we should certainly wonder who will get these jobs that are created. Should these jobs go to foreigners, much of the money will be siphoned off to foreign countries.
In order for this article to make sense, there is a lot of supposing going on - and the only one I suppose might be true is that oil will still be $130 a barrel - no matter whether it is from Alaska or wherever.
I’m not sure why Al Gore was mentioned.
Certainly, there is an argument to be made for drilling in Alaska - this article didn’t do it.
What I don’t understand is that the Republican party held majorities in both houses of Congress and had a Republican president for SIX years!
Why wasn’t something done during those SIX years of GOP dominance?
Vito, just think about the big picture of what has been happening to this country for the last 50 years.
It hasn’t mattered who (as party) was in the WH, who held the majority in congress - or whether the WH occupant and the majority were same party/different party/combination. The agenda to bring this nation to its knees, has been moving forward since Nixon went to China.
So called free trade, outsourcing, changing our immigration system, regulation after regulation, invasion by illegal aliens, our education system in a mess, welfare promoted as a way of life, and on and on and on.
It is all connected and it has all worked to diminish the pride, independence, and belief in ourselves and in our country.
Both parties work together and have done so to achieve this. Only the rhetoric is different - the big goal is the same.
Just picture politicians as professional wrestlers. They get dressed up in their ‘good guy’ or ‘bad guy’ suits. Each has his part to play in the charade. They get in front of the microphone and lambast each other, and profess dislike, etc. They truly would all like to be top dog. When it’s time to get to work (the real work), they all come together and make sure it gets done and all get their money from the same employer - and we are not those ‘employers’.
Amen Preach it. Im in AK and ANWR needs to be opened . We need the jobs and it would save the US a pretty penny. Companies are falling over each other wanting to build another pipeline to now lets get it done.
they should drill becasue it will produce thons of jobs and the US will get more money but we might hurt that animals at the same time.
June 6 at 1:18 am | #1 | Link
Is your space bar broken? Have you forgotten how to use the spell checker? What’swithrunningthewordstogether?
Why don’t you put spaces,as is proper,after commas?
You’re supposed to put two spaces after periods.One space has become the rule for newspapers, but you’re not a newspaper.So put at least one space after periods.
Is your copy writer a reject from the NY Times or did you outsource it to India?