Older article consistent with what I have read about the issue over the years. From what I remember, big oil's concerns about the quantity of oil in ANWR are driven by the following:
- Melting permafrost. Only one thing more costly than working on permafrost, and that is working on melting permafrost.
- The amount of time the Alaska pipeline can continue operating without major reconstruction. Seems the suspected volume of oil in ANWR may not justify rehabilitation of the pipeline.
Big Oil Steps Aside in Battle Over Arctic
New York Times
February 21, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21refuge.html. . .
Once allied, the administration and the oil industry are now far apart on the issue. The major oil companies are largely uninterested in drilling in the refuge, skeptical about the potential there. Even the plan's most optimistic backers agree that any oil from the refuge would meet only a tiny fraction of America's needs.
. . .
A Bush adviser says the major oil companies have a dimmer view of the refuge's prospects than the administration does. "If the government gave them the leases for free they wouldn't take them," said the adviser, who would speak only anonymously because of his position. "No oil company really cares about ANWR," the adviser said, using an acronym for the refuge, pronounced "an-war." Wayne Kelley, who worked in Alaska as a petroleum engineer for Halliburton, the oil services corporation, and is now managing director of RSK, an oil consulting company, said the refuge's potential could "only be determined by drilling." "The enthusiasm of government officials about ANWR exceeds that of industry because oil companies are driven by market forces, investing resources in direct proportion to the economic potential, and the evidence so far about ANWR is not promising," Mr. Kelley said. 
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