Ask AP: Alaskan oil, the Latin American drug trade

What happens to all the oil that flows hundreds of miles through the trans-Alaska pipeline? Is it true that it all gets sold to Japan?

A reader's curiosity about where that oil ends up _ and who profits from its sale _ inspired one of three questions in this edition of "Ask AP," a weekly Q&A column where AP journalists respond to readers' questions about the news.

If you have your own news-related question that you'd like to see answered by an AP reporter or editor, send it to newsquestions(at)ap.org, with "Ask AP" in the subject line. And please include your full name and hometown so they can be published with your question.

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I live in Arizona, and my impression is that the power brokers in the international drug trade have shifted from Colombia to Mexico. Is this true? If so, how has this affected Colombia? Is the country a safer place to visit?

Wallace Vincent Rose

Tucson, Ariz.

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Most of the cocaine in the United States is produced in Colombia and smuggled through Mexico. It has been that way for about two decades. But there has indeed been an important shift of mafia power to Mexico, which is now home to extremely violent and powerful cartels of the type that disappeared from Colombia in the mid-1990s.

While Colombian police, backed by billions of dollars in U.S. aid, have become more professional and less corrupt, Mexico has seen increasing cartel-related violence. Since President Felipe Calderon took office 18 months ago and began a crackdown, nearly 4,200 people have been killed in mafia-related violence, according to Mexico's attorney general.

It's difficult to say whether Colombia is safer for tourists than Mexico. First, the type of crime that befalls tourists is rarely drug-related in either country. Second, Colombia is safer today mostly because its government has succeeded in moving the armed conflict chiefly to remote areas where tourists rarely venture.

Frank Bajak

AP Chief of Andean News

Bogota, Colombia

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With all the pressure on Congress to lift sanctions against 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.

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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

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Can you provide a dollar cost, from start to present, of the war in Iraq?

Mario Garcia

Las Vegas, Nev.

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On Monday, President Bush signed legislation that will bring to more than $650 billion the amount Congress has provided for the Iraq war since 2003. The latest appropriations cover anticipated expenses for the rest of fiscal year 2008 and some of the expected costs in fiscal year 2009.

Economic analysts, however, point out that these appropriations do not cover some costs that have been incurred but haven't yet come due for payment _ particularly the future costs of caring for soldiers already wounded.

Charles J. Hanley

AP Special Correspondent

New York

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Have questions of your own? Send them to newsquestions(at)ap.org.