ANWR -- Down in Flames, Baby!

[Necros]

Guinastasia asked:

Norton-isn’t she a graduate of the James Watt School of Environmentalism?

Depends on who you ask. She’s not a hand-waving Sierra Club memeber, by any means. But she’s also not James Watt. Maybe if bio-brat had decided to read the article she linked to, she might have felt her three-word summation was a bit to facile.

[Cheesesteak]

Even if ANWR isn’t the holy grail of oil fields, and the answer to all of our woes, it is still considered a sizable asset. I don’t feel warm and fuzzy about leaving heavy duty assets lying unused without a good reason. We have done drilling in similar areas, haven’t we? Don’t we have any kind of unbiased view of what that drilling has done to the local environment? I hear words like “raping the environment” as if we are going to conduct some gargantuan stripmining operation.

Have the places in Alaska that have been drilled that much of a desolate wasteland? Are those areas uninhabitable by man or beast, thoroughly destroyed by this wanton greed? I would think that I would see evidence of this destruction instead of emotional outbursts.

Where is the data, the lost herds, the polluted soil, the 3 eyed fish? Enquiring minds want to know.

[Maeglin]

in addition to the ten to forty billion barrels of potential oil, ANWR very likely holds anywhere from ten to a hundred Trillion cubic feet of natural gas

Cite, please. The House Resources Committee disagrees with you.

[rjung]

*Originally posted by Cheesesteak *
Musicguy, please do not tell me that you are going to blame the Bush administration for a lack of alternative fuel sources, he’s not even been here for a year and a half, fer god sake!

Didn’t Dubya veto that bill requiring automobiles to have greater fuel efficiency standards last month?

[light_strand]

Ah Necros, but I did indeed read the entire article.

Perhaps you should try to read the article again, as you obviously didn’t understand it.

Not only did she lie by omission, but she actually told a blatant falsehood, which conveniently supported her position on drilling. She of course, said that it was a slip of the tongue. In addition she “cherry-picked the data that suited her”, and used studies funded by BP over studies done by her own department (Fish and Wildlife).

Did I miss anything?

[Tars_Tarkas]

*Originally posted by Guinastasia *
catsix-how about a cite for your claims? I’m not saying you’re lying (well, not YET, anyways), but perhaps some back up could be helpful?

Apparently only i have to provide cites, catsix can just make up numbers as facts until someone proves them wrong. So lets see if i can find anything (i usually suck at this, so if i fail, help would be gratiously accepted).
from here: http://www.wri.org/climate/anwr.html

There is considerable uncertainty as to when production in the ANWR Coastal Plain could begin. DOE estimates that oil production could start in the year 2010 if leasing were to occur in the next few years and that production would peak some 20-30 years after the onset of development. We assume that oil production in ANWR (at the expected 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil) would start at about 100,000 barrels per day (b/d), in 2010, and that it would peak 20 years later in 2029. (See Figure 5). If production follows the pattern of Figure 5, the ANWR Coastal Plain would produce 200,000 b/d or more for a period of about 30 years, (from 2013 to 2045).

It is clear that it would take some 13 years (from today) for the ANWR Coastal Plain to begin making a sizeable contribution to U.S. oil supply and that while this would be a non-trivial contribution to supply, it really does not change the long-term outlook.

Here is a list of all the animals on the refuge, from the official site: http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/wildlife.html

and the offical site homepage http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/arctic.html

their info on oil development: http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/issues1.html

The report concluded that oil development and production in the 1002 Area would have major effects on the Porcupine Caribou herd and muskoxen. Major effects were defined as “widespread, long-term change in habitat availability or quality which would likely modify natural abundance or distribution of species.” Moderate effects were expected for wolves, wolverine, polar bears, snow geese, seabirds and shorebirds, arctic grayling and coastal fish. Major restrictions on subsistence activities by Kaktovik residents would also be expected.

Now, catsix mentioned the oil pipeline being warm and attracting caribou. I fail to see how that compares to a big building and road attracting caribou, especially since large stretches of the oil pipeline don’t have people there constantly, but the wells will for extended periods (think they can build an oilwell in ten minutes?) here is a list of caribou populations along the pipeline: http://www.alyeska-pipe.com/Environment/Wildlife.html

It seems the numbers went up, but it is premature to credit the pipeline only, i bet it was conservation efforts put into place to allow the pipeline to bew built that helped the caribou more. I fail to see any effective conservation plans this time.

Originally posted bycatsixCurrently the information I have says that oil causes less smog and pollution than the gasoline that includes levels of ethanol. That does not mean that 2,2,4 trimethylpentane causes no pollution. There is a difference between ‘less’ and ‘none.’ I am fully aware of that. Are you?

(Less and none are different? WTF???) I have a magic fairy in a bottle. but i won’t show it to anyone!

but i’ll refute your wild claims with this lovely site: http://www.afdc.doe.gov/altfuel/eth_general.html

and this one: Stromvergleich umsonst - Kostenloser Stromanbieter Vergleich

and this one: Social Sciences

and this one: http://www.ott.doe.gov/biofuels/environment.html

Heck, i couldn’t find a single site that supported your claim! Maybe you can find it, but i gave up after 15 minutes.

[musicguy]

*Originally posted by Cheesesteak *
**
Have the places in Alaska that have been drilled that much of a desolate wasteland? Are those areas uninhabitable by man or beast, thoroughly destroyed by this wanton greed? I would think that I would see evidence of this destruction instead of emotional outbursts.

Where is the data, the lost herds, the polluted soil, the 3 eyed fish? Enquiring minds want to know. **

Does the Exxon Valdez ring any bells? Or how about this which occured in April 2001

In what may be one of the largest spills ever on the North Slope, 92,400 gallons of saltwater and crude oil leaked from a pipeline at the Kuparuk oil field Sunday night.

The mixture, which was more than 97 percent saltwater, leaked from a 10-inch pipeline at a temperature of more than 100 degrees. The spill saturated nearly an acre of tundra, said Ed Meggert, head of oil spill response with the state Department of Environmental Conservation in Fairbanks.

No exact cause has been determined, but Meggert said “it looks like erosion or corrosion to the pipe is the cause.” This is the fourth major spill on the North Slope this winter and the second due to erosion or corrosion.

From thissite by employees of BP

BP needs to fix their leaking valves, replace their corroded, rotten pipe, begin preventative maintenance programs, and staff with enough people to do the work, and be able to respond to emergencies. Only then should BP be allowed into ANWR.

I can provide more evidence of destruction if you would like.

[tisiphone]

*Originally posted by Doc Nickel *
**Ah yes, the good old ANWR arguments from people who have never been further North than Washington State. My hat is off to you.
**

I sincerely hope you aren’t referring to me. If so, please look up my location on a map of North America.

On-line cites I’ll have to look for (upon preview, I see musicguy has provided some, thank you much), what I’m working from are advisories mailed to the General Public up here a few years ago, from the Renewable Resouces Department of the federal government, warning hunters to limit the number of animals they take from pipeline areas due to heavy metal contamination, and for pregnant women to avoid or limit their intake of organ meats from those animals. There’s your polluted soils, Cheesesteak. No lost herds - yet. We want to avoid that, since it’s an integral part of the food supply for the poorer (or more traditional) people here. Got some money to put into studying it? Can you wait for the data before you start drilling? Can you be objective about the data and not manipulate either the data or the statistics to provide the results desired by the commissioning party?

DEW lines poisoning the land were taken from oral reports from people I knew hunting/working in the areas, plus the above mentioned advisories, plus some excellently detailed reports on CBC about ten-fifteen years ago. Did you know that the tracks of the caterpillars that put those suckers in are still visible almost sixty years later? It takes a damn long time for the tundra to recover from any damage. And us locals are still plenty pissed about our own government selling us out on that one. We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We have seen good mining, and suffered through the results of bad mining that was promised to be good mining. We know what happens to maintenance contracts when companies are re-organized/bankrupted, or when active extraction work ceases. We know how easy it is to skip maintenance, after all, you’re spending $100,000/yr (or more)for a guy to go look at stuff that’s never broken - until you stop doing it. We want SIGNIFICANT penalties for screwing up. We want the work, but not at the expense of our children. We want them to have a choice about their futures - whether to pursue traditional lifestyles, or to pursue fully modern ones, in the location of their choice.

We like it here. We don’t want to have to move to Vancouver/Toronto/Winnipeg, so that some day-tripper Sierra Club member can have an “unspoiled vista” anywhere they choose to point their $5,000 binoculars, or live well below modern living standards to provide them with ‘quaint native experiences’. Nor do we want to have to give up our food because some mining company headquartered in (generic large Southern city at least 5,000 km away) decided it was cheaper to skip routine maintenace and poisoned our food source. And many of us were here LOOOOONG before any white people thought about coming here, let alone exploiting it. There’s a difference between use and abuse, and I think most of us locals have a pretty firm grasp on it.

We want to be damn sure that the land won’t be abused, but we surely do want to use it, and we’ve been lost in the junk science on both sides.

[Cheesesteak]

Tisiphone I would hope that I could be objective, since I don’t really have a vested interest either way. I’m a scientist at heart, and try to have my opinions formed by the data, instead of the other way around.

Your information about heavy metal poisoning cuts right to the heart of the matter. If I was in charge, 3 questions would be answered before further development would be allowed:
How do these heavy metals get into the ground?
What can we do to remedy the situation we have created?
How do we prevent it from happening for future development?

musicguy no need to trouble yourself with more cites, the decision has been made and I can trust that both of my senators voted against the drilling. Spills do happen, the real question is how dangerous are they?

Even the Valdez, which was a freekin’ huge spill, didn’t exactly destroy Prince William Sound. TheNOAA states that PWS has rebounded remarkably from the spill. I don’t know if they have an axe to grind, they seem pretty neutral to me. When asked “has PWS recovered?” they basically say “sort of” which is WAY better than no. The local flora and fauna are living there happily, and there are still some traces of the spill to be found, if you look.

by many criteria, a number of the intertidal communities we study can be considered recovered. Does that mean all traces of the largest spill in U.S. history are gone and the Sound is recovered? No, not necessarily.

I worry that people apply a binary thought process to this sort of thing, if there is risk, then there can be no development. Without making a statement about what level of risk is acceptable, development will never happen. The mere fact that something can damage the environment does not automatically make it evil and unsupportable.

[DMC]

Exxon Valdez was a horrible accident, and we all know that accidents will happen. On the other hand this was no accident, so why should we trust the oil companies to do the right thing? I guess one could believe that the oil companies have more altruistic motives than profit.

For those who say you’d barely be able to see the site, have you been to Prudhoe Bay? It’s not a tiny little drilling operation, it’s a freaking town.

Oh, and Doc Nickel, some of us who are against the drilling have been very far north of Washington state, even north of the arctic circle. I did a lot of work for Alaska’s largest grocer, which sent me to such remote locales as Kotzebue. If you’re a resident, are you pro-drilling because you want your Permanent Dividend Fund check to be even larger than the $2,000 or so you get right now?

[UncleBeer]

Major effects were defined as “widespread, long-term change in habitat availability or quality which would likely modify natural abundance or distribution of species.”

There goes the 'burbs. The same thing can be said of the squirrels and rabbits and sparrows that live(d) where the majority of new homes are being built. Or in fact, any type of development at all. As cheesesteak has said, the benefits must be weighed against the costs. And while I’m not yet convinced ANWR drilling passes that test, the fraction of land involved here is insignificant. We’re talking 2000 acres in an area the size of South Carolina; it’s nothing. But declaring something out-of-bounds for further research because of imagined hobgoblins, no matter how terribly they may be conjured, is foolish.

The intelligent option here is to open up those 2000 acres for exploration. If the deposits then appear to be substantial enough to warrant further exploitation, at that point we can decide what environmental safeguards are both necessary and feasible before we begin extracting that oil. I would also suggest that for every dollar spent in exploration and extraction costs, companies would be required to spend a matching dollar researching alternative energy sources.

[musicguy]

*Originally posted by UncleBeer *
**
We’re talking 2000 acres in an area the size of South Carolina; it’s nothing. **

Ok, I’ve been looking for a cite relating to this for over an hour and I give up but I KNOW I read somewhere the other day that the 2000 Acre number is a little misleading. Supposedly, from what I read, it doesn’t just mean a clump of 2000 acres but that they are very spread out. For instance, in the case of a pipeline, only the land that the actual posts are on is counted, not the area taken up by the entire pipeline. My understanding are that these numbers are very skewed to downplay the amount of land affected.

PS: I’m sorry that I had to rely on things such as “supposedly” and “I know I ready somewhere…”. I generally won’t post that shit without a cite but I’ve searched 5 major news sites and punched shit into google until I was at a loss for alternative ways to phrase the query. I will continue looking to see if I can back this up.

[musicguy]

Maybe this will help

From this site

Myth: The “footprint” of development will be only 2000 acres, smaller than Dulles airport, due to advanced technology that continues to improve.
Fact: No matter how well done, oil development will industrialize a unique, wild area that is the biological heart of the refuge.

Fact: The Department of the Interior estimated that 12,500 acres would be directly impacted in a web of roads, drill pads, processing facilities and airports extending over hundreds of square miles, not in a compact area. (Dulles airport has 13,000 acres but only 350 acres of this is under concrete or gravel).

Fact: The entire 1.5 million acre Coastal Plain area would be opened to oil leasing under Senator Murkowski’s legislation. Recent U.S. Geological Survey studies conclude that potential oil resources are located in many small accumulations in complex geological formations, rather than in one giant field like Prudhoe Bay. It is more likely that oil development would spread over a large region connected by roads, pipelines, power plants, processing plants, airports, gravel mines, powerlines, and other infrastructure.

Fact: Although technological advances have reduced the size of individual drilling pads, the North Slope oil fields continue to sprawl across America’s Arctic with new roads, pipelines, drill sites and production facilities constructed each year.

Fact:: Infrastructure from Prudhoe Bay and 18 other producing oil fields and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline have directly affected about 22,000 acres of tundra wetlands. But the industrial complex extends across more than 1,000 square miles of the North Slope-- the size of the state of Rhode Island.

Fact: Decreased caribou densities within a zone 4 km of pipelines and roads show that the “extent of avoidance greatly exceeds the physical “footprint” of an oil-field complex,” according to caribou biologists (Nellemann and Cameron 1998).

Fact: Noise, air and water pollution, wildlife disturbance, and other impacts of oil exploration and development would extend well beyond the sites where direct habitat loss occurs.

Fact: “The visible effects of drilling may be best described by ARCO’s Ronnie Chappell, who says that even a state-of-the art operation in the Arctic will still look like a ‘small industrial site’.” (Audubon, December 1997).

and

Myth: The small footprint from Endicott exemplifies technological improvements of newer oil fields.
Fact: Even at newer oil fields like Endicott there have been significant problems with environmental management. In February 2000, BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. was sentenced to pay $15.5 million in criminal fines and to implement a new environmental management program, and to serve 5-years probation for failure to report illegal dumping of hazardous wastes down Endicott oil wells. BP also paid $6.5 million in civil penalties. Its contractor pled guilty to 15 counts of violating the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and paid a $3 million fine.

Over a period of three years, the drilling company had dumped wastes containing benzene and other toxic substances down well shafts, which ended only after a whistleblower came forward. In six years of chairing the Energy and Resources Committees, Alaska Senator Frank Murkowski and Representative Don Young have not held a single oversight hearing on the oil industry’s environmental abuses at Endicott, elsewhere on the North Slope, on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, or in Prince William Sound.

There are other myths dispelled there. Quite an interesting read.

[UncleBeer]

Myth: The “footprint” of development will be only 2000 acres, smaller than Dulles airport, due to advanced technology that continues to improve.
Fact: No matter how well done, oil development will industrialize a unique, wild area that is the biological heart of the refuge.

This debunks nothing. It’s an unsupported assertion.

Fact: The Department of the Interior estimated that 12,500 acres would be directly impacted in a web of roads, drill pads, processing facilities and airports extending over hundreds of square miles, not in a compact area. (Dulles airport has 13,000 acres but only 350 acres of this is under concrete or gravel).

Okay. 12,500 acres then. Still, it’s well under a tenth of one percent of the ANWR. Nearly insignificant.

Ad the rest of it talks about the expansion of a totally different oil field. As I said, we should explore, evaluate and then determine the necessary safeguards.

[musicguy]

from jshore in another thread

That 2000 acres number is a rather deceiving number for a few reasons:

(1) There’s some very creative accounting involved. Here’s some info from Union of Concerned Scientists on what this number really means:
quote:

In fact, the 2000-acre limit does not mean a single area of 2000 acres, but rather a total of 2000 developed acres dispersed over a large part of the Arctic coastal plain. Thus, for example, an extensive lattice-work of roads over thousands of square miles would only be counted as the
actual width of the roads, not all the adjacent areas in which wildlife would be disturbed. Similarly, the many miles of pipelines needed to move oil and gas to market would not be counted – just the area where the posts supporting the pipeline literally touch the ground. There are 37 miles of above-ground pipeline in the Alpine oilfield west on ANWR; under the “limitation,” such a pipeline network would be scored at less than one-quarter acre. The limitation also does not cover seismic activities involving convoys of
bulldozers and “thumper trucks,” nor exploratory drilling involving large rigs and aircraft.

This is the quote I was looking for.

UncleBeer,

That’s assuming that those safeguards will be enforced. That clearly hasn’t always been the case. Thats the main thing I don’t like about this. Everything I hear from the administration is that this will be totally unintrusive, everything will be fine and dandy. But when you look at the past history, there is no evidence that that has ever occurred before.

I don’t I agree with the word “insignificant” in your post. Approx. 45% of the people in Alaska find it significant.

Statewide public opinion polls show Alaskans to be closely divided on this issue. In a recent poll, 45% of Alaskans agreed that “the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) should be protected from oil drilling” while 49% disagreed and 6% were neutral or didn’t know (Alaska Conservation Alliance, July 2000).

[ElvisL1ves]

Originally quoted by musicguy

Originally posted by UncleBeer

We’re talking 2000 acres in an area the size of South Carolina; it’s nothing.

Ok, I’ve been looking for a cite relating to this for over an hour and I give up but I KNOW I read somewhere the other day that the 2000 Acre number is a little misleading. Supposedly, from what I read, it doesn’t just mean a clump of 2000 acres but that they are very spread out. For instance, in the case of a pipeline, only the land that the actual posts are on is counted, not the area taken up by the entire pipeline. My understanding are that these numbers are very skewed to downplay the amount of land affected.

Yes. It’s like claiming a window screen actually covers only 1 percent of the window, based on wire diameter.

The pipelines, service roads, exploration rigs and so forth might indeed only cover an aggregate of 2000 acres by themselves, but they’d be all over the landscape and a much larger area would actually be affected.

Anyway, we can hope this is the end of it. ANWR drilling was always a loser for the GOP, politically as well as substantively, and pressing it was hurting themselves unnecessarily.

[tisiphone]

It doesn’t seem to have been mentioned here that the area that the exploration companies are most interested in ARE THE CALVING GROUNDS. The ANWR does cover a lot of ground, sure, and when looked at as a pure ratio, the affected area is piddly and why not exploit it. But the affected area just happens to be one of the more significant reasons the whole refuge was created in the first place.

It is difficult to enforce any rules in a place so isolated, a fact I’m sure these companies are counting on. It is too damn expensive for any external auditing to be consistent. How many inspection tours would it take before somebody far away decided they weren’t cost-effective? My bet would be four. And lets just say that the Northern experience with Southern inspectors has been less than grand - most slough/slack off, or rush through things because they are desperate to leave. :rolleyes:

I’m glad the issue has been paused, hopefully it won’t come up again until the studies on how well the area recovers from the spills that have already occurred. We Yukoners are most interested in the objective results.

My friends who eat the caribou cannot afford to find a new food source. The average income is below $12,000/yr - in Canadian dollars. It costs far too much to switch from country food, as well as not being good for them. Dry meat is a much healthier snack than chips and chocolate.

[UncleBeer]

Yeah. These animals look “displaced.”
http://www.anwr.org/gallery/pages/15-calf%20under%20pipeline.htm
http://www.anwr.org/gallery/pages/11-Bears%20on%20pipeline.htm
http://www.anwr.org/gallery/pages/17-Caribou_no_impact.htm
http://www.anwr.org/gallery/pages/18-Caribou-on-pad.htm
http://www.anwr.org/gallery/pages/21-Polar_2bear.htm
http://www.anwr.org/gallery/pages/14-Birdnest.htm
http://www.anwr.org/gallery/pages/24-Walking%20endicott.htm
http://www.anwr.org/gallery/pages/12-Bears_at_play.htm
http://www.anwr.org/gallery/pages/20-Owl%20on%20pipeline.htm

And here’s a report from the USGS predicting little or no effect on calving within 4 km of the pipeline. Check figure 2.

http://www.usgs.gov/anwr/report.html

[Una_Persson]

*Originally posted by musicguy *
**Does the Exxon Valdez ring any bells? Or how about this which occured in April 2001
(snip)
I can provide more evidence of destruction if you would like. **

Yeah, you’re going to have to. Since what was provided was pretty silly.

Are you seriously comparing an incident where 92,400 gallons of saltwater and crude oil, which was more than 97 percent saltwater, covering only “nearly” (which could mean 51%) a single acre of tundra, to the Valdez? I think that magnitude has been completely forgotten here in the need to demonize the oil industry.

I’m guessing you have no scientific or engineering background whatsoever to compare a spill of less than 3,000 gallons of oil (by your own quote) to the Valdez. And was that the largest spill over 1 year? Jesus - that’s some tight quality control if so. FTR - how many gallons per year were moved through that pipeline? What percent is that?

From http://www.epa.gov/oilspill/exxon.htm, we see that Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of oil. Let’s do some comparing, assuming that the whole 92,400 gallons was destructive shit you don’t want dumped on the ground anyhow. I’ll do the math for you:

100*(92,400/11,000,000) = 0.84%

0.84% of Valdez != Valdez. Bringing up the name in an argument like this is inflammatory rhetoric.

(And on the Valdez and inflammatory rhetoric…remember that “bastion of the Left” on this Board that claimed in January that Bush Senior was directly responsible for the Valdez disaster, just the same as if he had “been behind the wheel”, then (of course) made a joke about him being drunk? Here’s a hint - the little creep has posted in this thread…and yet not a single person from the Left here ever castigated him for it…I wonder why not? Isn’t allowing people to say these things, just because they’re from your own side of the argument, “morally bankrupt”? Sure seems that way to me, but what do I know? )

I also wonder why the “temperature of more than 100 degrees” was emphasized too - I can assure you that “more than 100 degrees” is not an environmental armageddon. My body temperature was “more than 100 degrees” last week, after all. Oil dumped on calving grounds at “more than 100 degrees” is not more dangerous than oil dumped on calving grounds at ambient temperature (unless you are going to argue viscosity allowing it to flow more…).

The quote from alleged BP employees is one which, minus the last sentence, could and should be applied to any chemical or petroleum processing facility anywhere on the entire planet. Using it as a foundation for argument is like quoting someone saying “we need to be safe”. Here, you can quote me too:

Originally said by Anthracite**
By God, if they do explore and drill in the ANWR, they need to be pretty freaking careful.**

See? What fun.

[Kimstu]

Anthracite: Isn’t allowing people to say these things, just because they’re from your own side of the argument, “morally bankrupt”?

“Allowing”? I must have missed the memo where the adherents of a particular ideology were instructed to police the posts of those with similar beliefs. And judging from some of the nonsense that a few conservative posters regularly send forth here with no objections from other conservatives, y’all missed it too. Generally, it seems to work better on both sides to leave the policing up to one’s ideological opponents; they do a more thorough job and they enjoy the work more.