No Oil for Pork

So the Senate voted to open up Alaska to drilling, and then basically outlawed the exportation of any oil extracted therefrom.

I suppose as an environmentally conscious liberal I'm supposed to be indignant about this and calling my Senators from Ireland, but my real concern is that, pragmatically, it doesn't make much sense.

But no oil is likely to flow from ANWR for 10 years and peak production of about 1 million barrels a day isn't expected until about 2025, according to the Energy Department. Currently, the United States used about 20 million barrels of oil a day. Environmentalists have cited a report by DOE's Energy Information Administration that concluded that ANWR oil would only slightly affect gasoline prices and marginally lower the growth of imports by 2025, when imported oil would account for 64 percent of U.S. demand instead of 68 percent without ANWR's oil.

Basically, I think this is more about pork than oil.

If it will have little real effect on prices, if the productivity will not reach its peak for 10 years, then the real benefits are to the construction companies who will be building the facilities, not to the American public. In addition, this will likely take some public pressure (not that there was much anyway) off Bush and the oil companies to develop alternative sources of energy. "Just wait for the ANWR oil," they'll say.

Yeah, and some real estate just opened up on the Brooklyn Bridge.