Area in square miles of the arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska?

Sometimes simple questions do not lead to simple answers. This is one of them. The Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a huge frontier area and COULD contain many structures that contain oil. I have capitalized "could" for a good reason (note: This is the first time that I have raise my voice by using all capitals on a verb). ANWR may not have any commercially producible oil deposits. The US Geological Service estimated 5.7 to 16.0 billion barrels of technically - recoverable oil could exist in ANWR. Again, that could Word. Could zero barrels of recoverable oil exists? The answer is yes! To understand why there may be no oil in ANWR, I have included a second link, also from Wikipedia, on the North Atlantic oil deposits, which was another huge area. In this case, it was estimated that 7.2 billion barrels of oil could existed and 27.5 tillion cubic feet of gas could exist. After drilling five wells that failed to discover any oil, all exploration efforts came to an end. How is it that the geological estimates are so wrong? Do not blame the geologists- but the lack of data on which to base their estimates. Given the enormous size of ANWR, one would think that there must be some oil there. But is there sufficient quantity of oil and can oil be produced at a sufficient rate, so the investors (oil companies) can profit? Wikipedia states that there are no reserves (economically producible known oil) in ANWR only resources. Oil companies have walked away from large deposits, when the cost of development is more than their expected revenues. So, how much is there? Best guess is 0 to 16 billion barrels, with zero reserves being a definite possibility. How can we know better? Wells have to be drilled. Why aren't we doing this? Legal restrictions based on environmental concerns. If laws are changed, the next challenge may be the willingness of oil companies to make huge investments in a frontier area. Please read the related links.