Should Oil Drilling Be Allowed in the ANWR - Essay Example

Stephanie Stricker Amy Dyer English 112 April 13th, Oil Drilling: Should It Be Allowed in the ANWR? In the northern coast of Alaska lies the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is a wide stretch of land that is in the Alaska North Slope region and spans 19,286,482 acres. The ANWR or the Arctic Refuge is the habitat of a wide variety of arctic wildlife. This includes more than forty species of fish, more than thirty kinds of land mammals, more than a handful of marine mammal types, and nearly 200 hundred migratory and resident bird species (US FWS). A portion of the ANWR has been discovered to have potential gas and petroleum reserves. Section 1002 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which was passed by the United Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, deferred a previous decision of opening up 1.5 million acres for gas and petroleum exploration though. Nevertheless, since that this portion, called ‘1002 Area’ after the ANILCA section, has been considered as a probable source of oil and gas because of its proximity to the Mackenzie Delta, an area which has been found to have such resources by Canadians. Read More