TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kotchen,Matthew J.
AU  - Burger,Nicholas E.
TI  - Should We Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? An Economic Perspective
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13211
PY  - 2007
Y2  - July 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13211
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13211.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Matthew Kotchen
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies,
School of Management,
and Department of Economics
Yale University
195 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Tel: 203/432-9533
Fax: 203/436-9150
E-Mail: matthew.kotchen@yale.edu

Nick Burger
RAND Corporation
1200 South Hayes Street
Arlington VA 22202-5050
Tel: 805.636.9495
E-Mail: Nicholas_Burger@rand.org
AB  - This paper provides model-based estimates of the value of oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The best estimate of economically recoverable oil in the federal portion of ANWR is 7.06 billion barrels of oil, a quantity roughly equal to US consumption in 2005. The oil is worth $374 billion ($2005), but would cost $123 billion to extract and bring to market. The difference, $251 billion, would generate social benefits through industry rents of $90 billion as well as state and federal tax revenues of $37 billion and $124 billion, respectively. A contribution of the paper is the decomposition of the benefits between industry rents and tax revenue for a range of price and quantity scenarios. But drilling and development in ANWR would also bring about environmental costs. These costs would consist largely of lost nonuse values for the protected status of ANWR's natural environment. Rather than estimate these costs and conduct a benefit-cost analysis, we calculate the costs that would generate a breakeven result. We find that the average breakeven willingness to accept compensation to allow drilling in ANWR ranges from $582 to $1,782 per person, with a mean estimate of $1,141.
ER  -