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The senate blocked exploration of oil in some Alaskan areas if I understood the news report correctly. Similar things have been done to vulnerable areas in other oil producing countries. Is it really realistic? Will not the ever-increasing scarcity of oil eventually lead to exploration? (as benefit at some point will outweigh environmental costs)

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Just in case you are really interested in the facts about drilling in ANWAR.

Consider the following:

The companies that want to get at that oil estimate there's 16 billion barrels waiting to be pumped south – or about 30 years worth of Middle East oil imports. U.S. government geologists have estimated a likely reserve of perhaps 10.4 billion barrels in the 700,000-hectare coastal plain region at the northern end of the ANWR. That's the only part of the refuge where the U.S. government has considered lifting the ban on development.

But it would be economically feasible to pump out only a fraction of that reserve. A 1998 study estimated that about 1.9 billion barrels could be recovered at a price of $24 per barrel. Environmentalists and other opponents of opening the area to oil exploration argue there's no way to know how much oil is there.

The Union of Concerned Scientists suggests there may be enough oil to fuel vehicles in the United States for six months. It argues that making vehicles more fuel-efficient will save far more oil than Alaska could ever produce.

Fact: there is likely between 6 to 18 months worth of 'economically' recoverable oil. That will start to flow 8 to 10 years from now. How is any of that going to help us now. It won't. Don't say 'well it is a start' or 'every little bit helps' (see below).

Fact: there is not enough oil reserves in the entire United States for us to ever 'drill' our way out of our foreign dependence on oil.
The only answer is to reduce our demand for energy, find alternative energy sources and improve the efficiency and cost of current technologies.

Spend the billions of dollars that would be wasted in oil drilling in ANWAR and instead use it to finance research and development of alternative energy sources as well as improving existing technologies. This would create thousands of good paying jobs and if fruitful a new energy source. Spend money on public awareness programs to increase conservation and recycling. Make it cost effective to use recycled materials. If the automobile industry was forced to increase there MPG fleet average just a few miles it would save more oil in a few years than all the oil we would ever get from ANWAR. It would also increase jobs in Detroit, not ruin the industry as Rush Limbaugh and his ilk would have you believe.

We had a Manhattan project' to build the A bomb before the Nazis, we should have a Manhattan project' for a new source of energy. Consider this - if another country discovers something before us we will be even more dependent on foreign sources.

One other tidbit:

The Republicans' assertion that the plan would use "only 2,000 acres" of land for oil production is patently false. The 2,000 acres refers only to the actual drilling area and does not include the roads, airstrips, pipelines, and other support facilities that would be necessary to begin drilling in the reserve. Drilling in the refuge will really create a spider web of industrial activities over the entire 1.5 million acre coastal plain, so it is much larger than just a small footprint. This legislation might also open up nearly 100,000 acres of native land on the Arctic coastal plain.