March 1, 2002
Two Thousand Acres
By PAUL KRUGMAN
ccording to my calculations, my work space occupies only a few square inches of office
floor. You may find this implausible, but I'm using a well-accepted methodology. Well
accepted, that is, among supporters of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Last week Interior Secretary Gale Norton repeated the standard response to concerns about
extensive oil development in one of America's last wild places: "The impact will be limited to
just 2,000 out of 1.9 million acres of the refuge." That number comes from the House version of
the Bush-Cheney energy plan, which promises that "surface acreage covered by production and
support facilities" will not exceed 2,000 acres. It's a reassuring picture: a tiny enclave of
development, practically lost in the Arctic vastness.
But that picture is a fraud. Development won't be limited to a small enclave: according to the
U.S. Geological Survey, oil in ANWR is scattered in many separate pools, so drilling rigs
would be spread all across the coastal plain. The roads linking those rigs aren't part of the 2,000
acres: they're not "production and support facilities." And "surface acreage covered" is very
narrowly defined: if a pipeline snakes across the terrain on a series of posts, only the ground on
which those posts rest counts; bare ground under the pipeline isn't considered "covered."
Now you see how I work in such a small space. By those definitions, my "impact" is limited to
floor areas that literally have stuff resting on them: the bottoms of the legs on my desk and
chair, and the soles of my shoes. The rest of my office floor is pristine wilderness.
There's a lesson here that goes well beyond the impact of oil drilling on caribou. Deceptive
advertising pervades the administration's effort to sell the nation on its drill-and-burn energy
strategy. In fact, those of us following this issue can't see why people made such a fuss about
the Pentagon's plan to disseminate false information. How would that differ from current
policy?
Remember that this latest push to open up ANWR for drilling follows on the heels of an
attempt to portray a plan to do nothing much about global warming as a major policy initiative.
What else has the administration said about its energy plans that isn't true?
Top of the list, surely, is the claim that drilling in ANWR is a national security issue, the key to
ending our dependence on imported oil. In fact, the Energy Information Administration's
preferred scenario says that even a decade after development begins, ANWR will produce only
between 600,000 and 900,000 barrels of oil a day — a small fraction of the 11 million barrels
we currently import.
Then there's the absurd claim that ANWR drilling will create hundreds of thousands of jobs —
a claim based on a decade-old study by, you guessed it, the oil industry's trade association.
But the most nefarious aspect of the administration's energy propaganda is its persistent effort
to link energy shortages to environmentalism — an effort that, it's now clear, has often been
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