Passage Two
Questions 62 to 66 are based in the following passage.
Is there enough oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to help secure Americas energy future? President Bush certainly thinks so. He has argued that tapping ANWR s oil would help ease Californias electricity crisis and provide a major boost to the countrys energy independence. But no one knows for sure how much crude oil lies buried beneath the frozen earth, with the last government survey, conducted in1998, projecting output anywhere from 3 billion to 16 billion barrels.
The oil industry goes with the high end of the range, which could equal as much as 10% of U.S. consumption for as long as six years. By pumping more than 1 million barrels a day from the reserve for the next two to three decades, lobbyists claim, the nation could cut back on imports equivalent to all shipments to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. Sounds good. An oil boom would also mean a multibillion-dollar windfall in tax revenues, royalties and leasing fees for Alaska and the Federal Government. Best of all, advocates of drilling say, damage to the environment Would be insignificant. Weve never had a documented case of an oil rig chasing deer out onto the pack ice, say Alaska State Representative Scott Ogan.
Not so fast, say environmentalists. Sticking to the low end of government estimates the National Resources Defends Council says there may be no more than 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the coastal plain of ANWR, a drop in the bucket that would do virtually nothing to ease Americas energy problems. And consumers would wait up to a decade to gain any benefits, because drilling could begin only after mush bargaining over leases, environmental permits and regulatory review.As for ANWRs impact on the California power crisis, environmentalists point out that oil is responsible for only 1% of the Golden States electricity output ---and just 3% of the nations.
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