Oily insecurity

After Sept. 11, conservatives call again for drilling in Alaska -- but environmentalists say the real danger is our addiction to oil.

By Damien Cave

Sept. 27, 2001 | Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., took the Senate floor Monday and proposed two energy-related amendments to the defense bill now wending its way through Congress. Both aimed to tack on hundreds of pages of energy legislation and give oil companies permission to drill in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). With the nation preparing for a long, difficult war on terrorism, Inhofe argued, domestic control of energy -- gained in part through Alaskan drilling -- must become a priority.

"We will have to do something about our dependency on the Middle East for our ability to fight a war," he told his fellow senators. "Right now we are 56.6 percent dependent upon foreign [oil] sources for our ability to fight a war. That is not acceptable."

Few would disagree that foreign energy dependency is dangerous. Since the world's first oil shock in 1951 -- when Iran nationalized its oil fields and drove prices up by halting production -- American energy policy has focused on minimizing the damage that foreign oil exporters could do to domestic interests. But if Inhofe hoped to secure quick passage of a conservative energy agenda by making it a subset of defense, his hopes have already been dashed. The Senate's Democratic leadership and even Sen. Frank Murkowski -- the Alaska Republican who strongly favors drilling in ANWR -- are now calling for Inhofe to drop the amendments.

Defense should be handled on its own, they argue. With oil prices continuing to drop on fears that a global recession has just begun, energy policy can wait.

"Clearly we need to have a discussion about energy policy, and that debate will take place," says Kelly Moore, press secretary for Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. "But now is not the most appropriate time to do that."

And yet, even if Sen. Inhofe's attempt to fuse energy with defense amounts to what economist Paul Krugman calls "opportunism," his action has clearly reshaped the contours of the energy debate. Before Sept. 11, ANWR was an environmental issue. It was a question of global warming, smog and caribou on one side vs. the need to feed Americans' insatiable hunger for fuel on the other.

Now, the debate over ANWR centers on security. Those who favor drilling have started treating Alaska's oil fields as a key source of energy for the military and as a potential buffer to influence and instability from the Middle East, where an estimated two-thirds of the world's oil can be found. But environmentalists are also playing the security card, arguing that drilling in Alaska carries with it its own unsustainable risks. Extracting oil or natural gas from ANWR will require the extended use of the 800-mile Alaskan pipeline -- a pipeline that has been attacked before and that is, in the words of one expert, "indefensible."

The old arguments over land, animals and jobs are still relevant, both sides maintain. But now, even without prices rising at the pump, they've been pushed to the background. National security concerns dominate; the terrorist attacks, the ensuing war on terrorism and the attempt to protect against future disruptions of American life have become the lens through which political issues are seen. Not even the faraway wilderness has managed to avoid the country's new and defensive gaze.

Next page: 21st century war is more energy-intensive than ever before