Opening up ANWR for oil exploration is a good thing, but it is being pushed for the wrong reason. I have no idea whether or not we should be less or more dependent on ?foreign oil,? and except for all knowing socialist central planners, neither does anyone else. Furthermore, the fact is that there is no particular reason to suspect that new oil from Alaska will have any effect on our level of dependence. Actually, there is no reason to care about what percentage of our oil comes from where. The reason that we should open up the ANWR and other areas to oil drilling is to give the OPEC cartel some competition. Since the energy crisis of the 1970s, except for a brief period in the 1980s, our energy policies have acted as a cartel enforcement mechanism for OPEC. What cartels hate more than anything else is supplies entering ?their? market from sources outside the cartel. What every cartel needs to survive is supply restrictions and these can only come from government. Usually the supply restricting laws are implemented to protect a domestic cartel. Examples in this country include the former Civil Aeronautics Board, the Federal Communications Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, local franchise laws as with cable television, etc. When it comes to the OPEC cartel the supply restricting laws have come from our government and the cartel enforcement agency is the U.S. Department of Interior. This is taking place, of course, with the backing of the environmental movement-which is OPEC’s best friend and lobbyist in the halls of the U.S. Congress. The real reason to allow drilling in the ANWR, off the coast of North Carolina, or wherever is to break the back of the OPEC cartel. Greater independence from foreign oil may or may not come about as a result; this will depend on the relative price of foreign versus domestic oil in world markets. But frankly Scarlet, I don’t give a damn.