The potential flow rates of the conventional sources of hydrocarbons locked up in ANWR and the continental shelf cannot be known until they are produced. But we can make ballpark estimates.

All of these areas have been well explored, and we have an idea of what they might produce: a slight bump in the bell curve of U.S. oil production, like this:

That model is a best-case scenario of US oil production <i>if all off-limits federal lands were opened to drilling</i>.

There are limits on all of the remaining U.S. oil reserves, for numerous technical reasons that would be beyond the scope of this summary. To cite just one example, let’s look at the capacity of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

There is only one pipeline that could transport oil from ANWR: the 800-mile Trans Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS), which serves the Prudhoe Bay field. No other oil pipeline from Alaska’s north slope would ever be built, due to the cost and logistical issues. TAPS can transport a little over 2 mbpd, and carried about 740,000 bpd last year. Therefore, if we brought ANWR online today, it could at maximum deliver about 1.25 mbpd. But in reality, it would take 8-10 years after approval to begin producing the first of that oil. Furthermore, preliminary estimates by the USGS indicated that ANWR would likely only produce around 750,000 barrels per day at peak.

If we are currently on the peak/plateau of global oil production, and production starts to fall within the next five years, then 10 years from now, at a reasonable average 2.0% rate of net depletion, world oil production will be down 11 mbpd—about 12%—from where it stands today.

In total, we believe that if all limits on domestic drilling were removed, it could only increase US oil production by a maximum of 2-3 mbpd. Once it came online bit by bit, given the loss in global oil production by that time, the additional oil from ANWR and all other undeveloped federal lands will be underwhelming.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that drilling in ANWR would only reduce the price of gasoline by less than four pennies per gallon—20 years from now!

Although every barrel we can produce domestically will be welcome and would slightly reduce our dependency on imports, the idea that we can somehow drill our way to independence from imported oil is misleading in the extreme. At the rate that the U.S. currently uses oil, the chance of producing all of our own needs domestically is zero. The only way we can truly become energy independent is by severely curtailing our oil demand, and switching loads over to renewables.
Indeed, we should recognize, as the Saudis have, that the oil that remains will only become more valuable as time goes on, and it makes sense to save some for future generations. Burning every last bit of it as quickly as we can makes no sense at all.