Note: Baked Alaska contains no Alaska

Well, you may be aware that Alaska's largest oil field has been shut down, for an as-of-yet unknown period of time. The implications of this have not yet been fully realized, except that apparently BP has made enough money over the past year that they can afford to stop producing a large portion of their raw materials, heh. (just kidding. Or am I?) [update, the field only needed to be partially shut down in order to perform the maintenance, not totally, as BP had thought]

The sad part is that we should already have another functioning oil field in Alaska, producing its fair share of the nation's crude. Why don't we? I hate to use the cliche, but I'm afraid in this case the answer actually does seem to be Democrats In Congress, so I have little choice.

An acquaintance of mine once posted a blog saying that she wants to visit Alaska before it turns into a giant oil field. This prompted me to do a bit of math. I will reproduce my results here. Please bear with me, or skip to the part where I explain the significance of these numbers.

Area of the State of Alaska: 1,717,854 sq. km

Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: 79,318 sq. km

Thus, the percentage of the State occupied by ANWR is: 4.61%

Area of the region being researched for petroleum: 6,707 sq. km

Thus, the percentage of ANWR being investigated for possible exploitation is: 8.45%

Therefore, the percentage of Alaska that is being investigated for development is: 0.39%

This is a tiny percentage, but then Alaska is a huge state. So, we're still talking about
a fairly large area here.

So, let's see of that area under research, how much of it would be developed if oil companies were to go in and drill for oil. According to various sources (go look it up yourself if you don't believe me), the footprint would be approximately 8 sq. km.

So now we have the following numbers:

The percentage of the exploration area that would be developed would be: 0.12%

So, the percentage of ANWR covered is: 0.0101%

And the percentage of Alaska covered is: .000464%


Now, to put it all into perspective.
Take a normal sheet of printing paper (assume 8.5"x11"), and pretend it represents Alaska.
Now, relative to this sheet of paper, the area that would be consumed (assuming it would all be consumed) is... .000434 sq. inches
Or, .011 sq. mm, if you prefer.

For comparison, the area of the end of piece of new lead for a 1mm mechanical pencil is .785 sq. mm. So, the dot of a pencil on that piece of paper is 71 times larger than the footprint the oil fields would have in Alaska.

Try it.

In exchange, note that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created, and our nation's domestic oil production would rise by 25%. One source* estimates that our trade deficit could be reduced by 14 billion dollars per year. That's $14,000,000,000 by the way.

Now, put that dot on the piece of paper, and make it 71 times smaller.
And in doing so, save billions of dollars, reduce our dependency on the whims of the People's President Hugo Chavez and Iran's Elected Jihader in Chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and drop gas prices to boot.

Worth it?

*The source was arguing in favor of drilling, just to keep the record straight.
You can accuse this figure of being inflated, but to be fair you must also investigate
opposing claims which are deflated. Say the number is only half that,
that's still 7 billion dollars, plus the other benefits. Worth it?