Oppose Oil Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Continued Threats to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Chronology of Events
October 31: Eight environmental groups have petitioned the Senate to investigate whether the Department of the Interior is withholding scientific evidence critical to the debate over drilling in the ANWR from Congress. In testimony, Gale Norton has omitted information about potential harm to caribou. in addition, two reports from the Fish and Wildlife Service regarding threats to the endangered polar bear have never been given to Congress. "These discrepancies raise serious questions regarding the scientific integrity of the Department's answers, and the process by which these answers were developed within the Department," the environmental organizations said in their letter.
October 30: The US Fish and Wildlife Service
produced two internal reports that warned that drilling
in the ANWR might violate an international agreement to protect the endangered
polar bear. "It is no secret that some polar bears forage, rest and enter dens to give birth in
the Arctic refuge's coastal plain, the area where the administration hopes to drill. One of the 1995 Fish and Wildlife
reports, titled "Habitat Conservation Strategy for Polar Bears in Alaska," noted that the Arctic refuge contains "the greatest concentration of denning polar bears in Alaska," with "the heaviest
denning" in the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain. ...[E]ven Interior's Web site acknowledges that drilling could affect denning in the Arctic: "Because the highest densities of maternal land denning overlaps with potential oil and gas development
in the [coastal plain], disturbance from exploration and development activities could cause den abandonment by pregnant females or females with newborn cubs."
October 25: In the wake of terrorist attacks and anthrax threats, reordered priorities mean that the Senate may not have time to consider the energy bill before its winter recess. This is probably good news, because as time passes, the disingenuous right wing will be less able to claim that drilling in the ANWR is a matter of national security interests. Senator Frank Murkowsi of Alaska continues his relentless push to drill in the refuge however, so the battle is not over.
October 14: In the Senate, Mr. Daschle may offer the ANWR drilling proposal for a floor vote, confident that supporters do not have enough votes to break a promised Democratic filibuster. But the Republicans want a straight majority vote, which might allow passage of the bill. Gale Norton is still lying about the importance of the ANWR site, outrageously implying that the oil there will eliminate our foreign oil dependence, whereas the truth is that the amount of oil there is probably relatively small. Alaskan Senator and potential beneficiary of revenue from the drilling plan is still trying to accuse anyone who opposes him of being unpatriotic, and disingenuously claiming that the ANWR oil reserves are vital for our immediate national security, even thought they won't produce a drop of oil for 7-10 years.
Update: The Defense bill was passed after a cloture vote forbade the additions of any amendments. The ANWR is safe for now, but no doubt its defilers will try to tack the drilling bill onto another bill soon. So stay tuned!
September 25: The Republicans in the House are pushing for the ANWR drilling provision to be part of a bill called the Homeland Energy Security Act, proposed by none other than Alaskan Senator Frank Murkowski, which along with measure to protect the nation's energy production facilities, once again provides for increased domestic drilling in the ANWR and other places. Mr. Murkowski stated earlier this same week that it would be "inappropriate and in poor taste" to capitalize on the terrorist attacks to push his own state's agenda. He has a terribly short memory it seems. Several Republicans craftily cited wartime needs and national security, but none bothered to point out that not one drop of oil could be retrieved form the ANWR for ten years. This is pure unadulterated partisan opportunism. Not one called for increased energy conservation. Energy Committee chairman Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, another state that relies heavily on oil income, claimed that on September 11, a spike in oil prices was a result of foreign dependence, when in fact it was the result of greedy and opportunistic oil distributors and gas stations. Once these tactics were exposed, prices fell again almost immediately. Make your disgust known! Use the links below to locate and contact your Senators.
September 22: All concerned American citizens must act immediately! The Bush administration has been pushing Congress hard to open up this national monument land to oil exploration. Their motivation is line the pockets of their oil industry cronies. I was alerted last week by the action group MoveOn that Alaskan Senator Frank Murkowski was contemplating attaching the ANWR drilling amendment to the currently debated national defense appropriations act. Senator Murkowski has been a leading advocate of ANWR drilling, and he is motivated solely by the guaranteed financial gain for his state. This Republican senator from Alaska, whose state stands to reap big time profits from the development of the national monument site would disingenuously capitalize on the recent tragic terrorist attack to further his own personal political agenda.
His excuse was national defense and security, which is completely ludicrous. There are numerous ways to address our dependence on Middle Eastern oil that do not require us to drill in our national monument lands, and besides, the ANWR supplies will do little to address this problem, as I discuss below. The disgusting reality came to light and caused Senator Murkowski to back off from his plan. He stated: "It would be inappropriate and in poor taste." Apparently Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe thinks it perfectly fine to attach an unpopular amendment to an appropriations bill for the defense of our great nation after the worst terrorist attack in history, even though the amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with national security. According to his spokesman: "We just feel these energy security issues are so important in light of what's happened and independent of what's happened." I expect this kind of partisan back-stabbing on an average day. But to callously use the nation's tragedy to push for partisan political gain is disgusting and reprehensible. ALL Americans must make their disgust known.
Write and call your own senators. Directories at THOMAS.
Write Senator Inhofe and make your outrage plain: http://www.senate.gov/~inhofe/
Call Senator Inhofe's office and leave a voice mail: 202-224-4721
Why drilling the ANWR is not a matter of national security interest:
Why do I claim that drilling for oil in the ANWR is NOT in the country's national security interests? First, there will be no oil from that site for about ten years, so how can drilling there help our immediate national defense? The US Geological Survey report stated it would take between 7 and 12 years to explore and develop Area 1002 in the ANWR (the area subject to current pending legislation).
Second, the supply of oil there is thought be limited. The USGS reports that the output are estimates with an upper and lower range. Based on their survey, they estimate a range of 5.7 billion (95 percentile) to 16 billion (5 percentile) technically recoverable oil TOTAL. The upper estimates of 16 billion did not include development cost, but did include potential recovery from surrounding private holdings and offshore sites that are not in Area 1002. Another way of reporting the output was listed as economically recoverable oil, which also takes into account current oil prices and development costs (sounds reasonable doesn't it). these estimates are of course lower than the technically recoverable ones. Assuming a price per barrel of $24, they range from 1.9 billion (95%) to 9.4 billion (5%). If the price per barrel is $16 or less, there is NO economically recoverable oil in ANWR. To put the amounts in perspective, Americans currently use 19 million barrels a day, or 7 billion barrels a year. Thus there is a 50% chance of finding a 9 month's supply of oil in the 1002 Area, at $24 per barrel. Looked at another way, if the average output was 290,000 barrels a day for 30 years, at current prices and usage (and how likely are those to be stable over 30 years?), Area 1002 would provide less than 2% of daily vehicular fuel. Not exactly going to eliminate our foreign oil dependence is it?
Third, fuel efficiency measures could achieve far more savings in oil usage than the ANWR could ever produce. At the daily average estimated above, that much oil could be saved if light vehicles became 0.4 miles per gallons more efficient. Today, American cars average 24 mpg, a 20-year low. Congressman Mark Udall, who represents Boulder, notes that raising the average to 40 mpg by 2010 would save 10 times as much oil as would likely be extracted from ANWR.
The benefits of drilling in ANWR are small, but the environmental impact will be large. Developing this site will do NOTHING to reduce out dependence on foreign oil. Not even a drop in the bucket. All OPEC has to do is lower their price per barrel and it isn't even economically feasible to develop the site. Domestic oil companies are not going to patriotically develop domestic oil if they aren't going to make money. Coming to their aide, the Bush administration wants to subsidize their development costs as well, to the tune of $33 billion, so they will stand to reap even more raw profit. If our foreign oil dependence is such a grave matter of national security, why are some domestic companies allowed to sell their oil abroad?
The ANWR Coastal Plain is the last 5% of Alaskan coastal plain closed to oil exploration. The much touted 2000 acre limit applies only to rigs, and only to things that actually touch the ground. The bill passed in the House would require leasing no less than 200,000 acres. The 2000 acres would not have to be contiguous, and certainly would not be. The oil there is not thought to be concentrated, like at Prudhoe Bay, but in small diffuse pockets. Tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil are spilled every year at Prudhoe. Drilling in the ANWR would put a larger region at risk for irreparable environmental damage and pollution. Oil transfer would require the building of 200 miles of roads and 200 miles of pipeline. A proposal to construct ice roads would require removing water from critical fish habitats. The actual size of the resultant complex would cover as much as 300,000 acres, according to the US Interior Department. The drilling proposal will devastate the refuge.
Drilling in Prudhoe Bay has
been riddled with nearly daily
The cost to the environment will potentially be very high. There will be no provision for the oil industry to be environmentally responsible, or to clean up after themselves. Not with Bush in Washington, his Interior Department and EPA are too busy trying to gut environmental protection laws. The bottom line is, it isn't worth it to develop ANWR. The public and environmental cost is too great, the benefit in energy output too small.
The Truth About Drilling in ANWR
The White House and other supporters of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge want to minimize the impact of this action by repeatedly claiming it only involves a measly 2000 acres of a 1.5 million acre area. This is completely misleading. We don't need to drill in the ANWR because it probably contains at most a total of one year's worth of oil at present consumption levels. Drilling there won't help with the current imaginary energy shortage because it will take years to develop the site. The amount of oil it will likely yield would supply 2% of gasoline for cars per year, an amount that could easily be saved if vehicles were 0.4 mpg more efficient.
The ANWR Coastal Plain is the last 5% of Alaskan coast plain closed to oil exploration. The much touted 2000 acre limit applies only to rigs, and only to things that actually touch the ground. The bill passed in the House would require leasing no less than 200,000 acres. The 2000 acres would not have to be contiguous, and certainly would not be. The oil there is not thought to be concentrated, like at Prudhoe Bay, but in small diffuse pockets. Tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil are spilled every year at Prudhoe. Drilling in the ANWR would put a larger region at risk for irreparable environmental damage and pollution. Oil transfer would require the building of 200 miles of roads and 200 miles of pipeline. A proposal to construct ice roads would require removing water from critical fish habitats. The actual size of the resultant complex would cover as much as 300,000 acres, according to the US Interior Department. The drilling proposal will devastate the refuge.
Save the Arctic Wildlife Refuge
Despite claims by the big oil companies that they can drill and have drilled responsibly on Alaska’s North Slope, spills are commonplace. At the Prudhoe Bay oilfield , just 60 miles west of the refuge, reportable spills of oil products and hazardous substances happen every day and are compounded by the noise and air pollution industrialization brings. Shortly after drilling started in this area, the central arctic caribou herd shifted its calving grounds away from development, resulting in the use of lower quality habitats.
Oil contamination from leaks in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, during transfer to tankers, and from tanker accidents occurs frequently, too, most notably in 1989 when more than 10 million gallons of crude oil spilled from the Exxon Valdez into Prince William Sound. This spill contributed to the deaths of more than 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles and nearly two dozen whales, and continues to affect
wildlife populations today. Biologists are also concerned about the long-term environmental effects of the millions of gallons of waste from oil and gas operations disposed of in open pits, injected into the subsurface, frozen into the permafrost and discharged directly into the air and water.
If oil exploration goes forward, we will not see a drop of oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for 10 years, and the extra supply will not lower the price of oil.
Developing an oil-producing operation is a lengthy and expensive process and is only feasible when oil prices are high. The OPEC nations control the price of oil and would quickly cut world supply
to offset any influx of Alaskan oil. There is no guarantee oil from the refuge would ever reach American consumers because Alaska’s congressional delegates are strongly pushing to resume selling Alaskan oil to China, Korea, Japan and other foreign countries , a practice that was halted during recent oil company mergers.
Despite the environmental and economic facts, President George W. Bush and his Big Oil allies are intent on opening the coastal plain to drilling.
Remember, the law that created the refuge left Congress with the power to open it to drilling. For years, whenever the political climate has been favorable, pro-drilling advocates have pushed for legislation to open the refuge. The odds are now overwhelmingly in their favor.
Big Oil’s contributions to political campaigns have won them new allies in the White House and on Capitol Hill. The Bush administration has made opening the refuge a cornerstone of its energy policy and chosen energy and interior secretaries who share his will to drill. The pressure is on to try every legislative maneuver from stand-alone legislation to slipping a drilling rider onto some completely unrelated, must-pass bill.
The threat to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the nation’s last unspoiled major arctic ecosystem, has never been greater.
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