Energy Incongruity

We are all aware of the importance of energy independence. Politicians of every stripe are constantly braying about America's need to wean herself off of foreign oil. To that end the government is willing to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to develop inefficient fuels like ethanol. Soon we'll all be burning staggeringly expensive ethanol in our unbelievably expensive, plastic shitbox cars. The bad news is that these vehicles will be structurally unsafe, the good news is that they will lack the necessary power to pull a sick whore off a pisspot. But I digress.

There are currently 1828 land based drilling rigs working in these United States, 872 of which are in Texas alone. Everybody knows that Texas is a large oil and gas rich state, but what you may not be aware of is that Alaska is over TWICE the size of Texas. That's right, if you cut Alaska in half then Texas would be the THIRD largest state. Keeping in mind that the density and distribution of Alaska's mineral resources are AT LEAST equivalent to Texas', we can extrapolate that Alaska has at least twice as much oil and gas as Texas. Based on this information we can assume that there are approximatly 1750 drilling rigs working in Alaska. Close, there are 10. Lets recap, 872 rigs drilling in Texas, 201 rigs drilling in Oklahoma, 117 rigs drilling in Colorado, 10 rigs drilling in Alaska. At the risk of showing my stupidity, I pose this question. Instead of wasting time and money on silly solutions like ethanol, wind farms, and $10 light bulbs, why not just go get the oil and gas that we already own? The answer to my question is so obvious and simple that it can't possibly be correct, but for an in depth explanation of just how wrong it is you'll probably need to ask the fine folks over at greenpeace or the sierra club.