This is about to return to the same set of arguments as several other threads so I'm going to say quickly:

1) While we do not know how much oil is under ANWR the expectation is that it is significant.

2) There is no way that ANWR oil will take the place of imported oil, now, near future, far future. The US consumption rate is far above the Alaska pipeline at its most productive, which was almost three times the current flow.

3) It is arguable that ANWR combined with conservation could help the US toward a balance of trade.

My main point in bringing forth this thread was to point out that well informed Alaskans are aware of the complexity of the issue, and that there is a lot of hyperbole on both sides of the issue, some of which has cropped up in this thread, whether it is a bland assumption that all the oil we need is there or that caribou are threatened by the development. Craig Medred, the author of the first citation in this thread boiled the arguments down rather well.