anything supporting this, liking that its true
later i googled some and found:
------question:
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Jul04/0,4670,AskAP,00.html
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I'm wondering what happens to all the oil that flows through the trans-Alaska pipeline. How much flows through it every day? I believe I heard on a news program that all that oil is being sold to Japan. Is that really true? Didn't taxpayer dollars pay for the pipeline's construction? And who is reaping the rewards of all that oil?
Wes Hubbart
Albuquerque, N.M.
------>answer:
Despite the opening of new fields, oil production in Alaska has steadily declined in recent years. The amount flowing through the trans-Alaska pipeline has fallen from a high of more than 2 million barrels a day in 1988 to 740,000 barrels a day in 2007, according to the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.
After-tax profits go to the oil companies and royalties go to resource owners _ mainly the state of Alaska, whose budget relies heavily on the money from oil production. About $2 billion in oil royalties went into the state's general fund last year.
Other resource owners include the federal government and private landowners _ parties that generally support drilling in ANWR because it would add to the dwindling supplies of the state's existing oil fields.
The crude oil that flows down the 800-mile pipeline is picked up by tankers in the port of Valdez. According to state officials, the bulk of the crude is transported to West Coast refineries, with a small percentage remaining in Alaska and an unknown amount going overseas.
According to the CIA's World Factbook, the U.S. exported 1.048 million barrels of crude per day in 2004 _ which amounts to about 12 percent of domestic production _ and imported 13.15 million barrels a day that same year. It's unclear how much of the exported oil originated in Alaska.
A group of oil companies paid for the pipeline to be built in the late 1970s at a cost of $8 billion. Interest holdings in the pipeline have changed hands several times and today three companies own much of the pipeline and most of Alaska's oil leases: BP PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips.
Jeannette J. Lee
AP Business Writer
Anchorage, Alaska