how much would it hurt the environment? If it is so damaging, then why is Texas not a wasteland? I am asking these questions as someone who truly doesnt know. I am not trying to flame the environmentalists.
The hinterlands of Alaska can easily be explored, drilled, and exploited to the maximum benefit of mankind with minimal environmental damage - which doesn’t really count in the long run because the whole scene is going to change regardless of human endeavor.
The combination of modern slant drilling and superb acoustic modeling have served to reduce the ecological impact an order of magnitude. None of this really matters when you consider that Alaska represents a few weeks or months extra supply for the lower 48.
We need to shift over to hybrid engines and hydrogen based fuel systems to make any real difference. Detroit and the boys in Texas aren’t really interested in that. So don’t count on it anytime soon.
Our President, Mr. Bush is apparently very big on the locals (or states rights) having the biggest , say on what goes on in our own territory, or so we’re told here in Idaho.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The peoples of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Tlingits) should have the biggest say in what becomes of their historical/cultural land. The Porcupine caribou herd is their livelihood, they believe that development will cause irreparable harm to their way of living. Really, what is the point of destroying a heritage for a few weeks of over consumption of oil.
Oil exploration/exploitation in ANWR is yet another case of our current president’s attempts to appease the political hierarchy that elected him.
Tlingits live on the Pacific Coast, from Yakutat down into Washington. You’re thinking of the Gwich’in, who rely on the Porcupine herd. Most of them live in Canada, though some occupy parts of the wildlife refuge. Then you’ve got the inhabitants of Kaktovik, the only decent-sized village within the refuge boundary. Those people are Inupiat Eskimos IIRC, and they want the oil development. Means jobs for them.
Wait. Are you suggesting Texas is not now a wasteland? Admittedly, I haven’t spent much time there, but…
–Grump “Yellow Clouds of Texas” y
A few weeks? A month?
So let me get this straight, we’ve been pulling billions of barrels of oil out of the North Slope area for around thirty-five years, just so you Lower 48ers can run your weedwhackers for a week?
Back up a second and think about that again. Are you sure you have your numbers right? Or are you parroting something from a Sierra Club webpage?
It’s a simple binary choice- we buy more oil from foreign sources, typically located in, shall we say, unstable areas and domineered by government-like regimes we most certainly don’t agree with nor get along with well, or we develop more US-based sources.
We buy oil from the middle East, they use it to build up their military, requiring us to spend more on our military and intelligence assets.
We produce it locally- relatively speaking- and create jobs and income for US workers and services.
And yes, believe it or not, we ARE developing “alternative” sources. You can, right now, buy a hybrid or an electric-only car. Sure, they’re limited and not widespread, but when the gasoline engine first came out, IT was limited and not widespread. These things take time.
Compared to handling liquid hydrogen, compressed natural gas or other “alternative” sources, gasoline is easy, safe, and powerful. Not to mention cheap.
Compared to building a hydrogen/methane fuel cell, or a safe storage system for more than 45 miles’ worth of liquid hydrogen, or making a battery that doesn’t take 12 hours to recharge or loses 65% of it’s power in cold weather, the gasoline engine is simple, reliable, inexpensive, easy to repair, and unlikely to Hindenburg at the gas pump.
These technologies WILL come, but it takes time.
In the meantime, do we pass billions of dollars to the esteemed Mr. Hussain so he can build more SCUDs and buy more Russian-surplus anti-aircraft cannons, or do we keep those billions in the US and cut the apron-cords, if only a little, to foreign sources?
And in addition, there’s more to oil than gasoline. Yes, eventually we may have mostly electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells running everything, but as long as you people want disposable (plastic) razors and Evian bottles, plastic cases for your cellphones, laptops, desktops and Palms, and lightweight (plastic) panels on those electric cars so it’s not tugging around 900 extra pounds of steel and aluminum, we will HAVE to keep supplying oil. That kind of stuff is hard to synthesize from kelp and rocks.
Doc, you err in one thing there; a good deal of North Slope oil doesn’t go to help America and give less to Saddam… At least one oil company just got busted in Oregon for price fixing (where much of the supply comes from Prudhoe); while they said there was a supply shortage which sparked the price hike, production had not dropped - much had been diverted to overseas sales to Japan.
Lemme go look for the GD link…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by TheeGrumpy *
**
Tlingits live on the Pacific Coast, from Yakutat down into Washington. You’re thinking of the Gwich’in, who rely on the Porcupine herd. Most of them live in Canada, though some occupy parts of the wildlife refuge. Then you’ve got the inhabitants of Kaktovik, the only decent-sized village within the refuge boundary. Those people are Inupiat Eskimos IIRC, and they want the oil development. Means jobs for them.
Yer exactly right Theegrumpy.
:::glances over shoulder::: Is my ignorance showing?
Somehow, enviromentalists have perpetuated the myth that the mere presence of oil drilling rigs in ANWR will disrupt the reproductive cycle of the caribou. The fact is, caribou often come right up on the the drilling pads to give birth, preferring them to the marshy tundra that is loaded with mosquitos.
Now, at this point, I would ordinarily point you to a corroborating website for this information; however, this came direct from the guys at the Kenai Peninsula Moose Lodge #1942, who witnessed this behavior first hand when they worked in Prudhoe Bay in its heyday. None of them would be caught dead typing at a computer keyboard, so I thought I would relay their amusement with the fables being spread about the delicate nature of the caribou herd.
Fear- I’ll verify that. Wasn’t there personally, but I’ve seen the tapes.
I’ve also seen, personally, moose and caribou walking through a refinery here on the Peninsula, and caribou sitting around quite unperturbed with literally hundreds of touristas clicking and snapping away, taping everything, chatting to each other and murmuring the tourist equivalent of “nice moosey-moosey-moosey.”
The Porcupine Caribou herd is huge, consisting of hundreds of thousands of animals, covering a range of literally millions of acres.
Having been in the oil field biz in the past, I can tell you that regulations are already in place, and have been for many, many years, that the local wildlife is NOT to be disturbed or harmed. Workers driving from pad-to-pad on the Slope have, on frequent occasions, been delayed for literally hours as the caribou herd migrates past the road. (Think of the biggest cattle-rustling scene in any western movie and multiply the number of animals by a factor of about two hundred.)
As the driver is strenuously prohibited by company policy from even honking at the 'Boo, he’s stuck 'til they pass by.
The amount of area modern drilling facilities require is a third what it was twenty years ago. Take a piece of standard typing paper. Now make a dot off to one side of the paper with a ballpoint pen. Relatively speaking, that’s about how much area of ANWR will be occupied by drilling. Truly horrendous, isn’t it?
Jorge- I won’t say oil companies are the greatest philanthropists on Earth. They’re in it for the buck like the rest of us. The oil we export to places like Japan and Korea are part ofhuge trade deals- we commit a percentage of our oil for their market, they commit a percentage of certain products for our markets.
I don’t agree with some of what they do either, but the fact remains that we currently import over 51% percent of the oil we use. We are not only dependent on foreign oil, we’re addicted. And that dependency leave us wide open for greedy whims of OPEC members, and vulnerable to imbalances in politics of the region.
My point was, in the previous post, that when people think “oil” they only consider gas for the car or a can of WD-40.
When in fact, right now as you’re reading this, you have probably fifty kilos of oil-derived products within arm’s reach: That plastic coffee cup or soda/water bottle, 30% or so of your PC and 80% of your keyboard, probably 50% of your office chair, a fair chunk of your desk (even if it’s “wood” there’s resins and binders, laminates and veneers, etc) maybe 30% of the clothes you’re wearing, your pens, the pen holder, your in/out boxes, the CD rack, that gum you’re chewing, that scented candle, all the wire insulation in that big tangle of cables behind the desk, the power strips, about half the miscellaneous junk in the drawers, the Twinkie wrappers…
Sorry, got carried away. 
Actually, we’re more worried about this type of situation.
The Vuntut Gwich’in still obtain most of their food from the Porcupine Caribou herd. It is prohibitively expensive to eat much else. And there isn’t a whole lot of money floating around Old Crow. (Yes, that is the name of their hamlet.) The last thing they want to see is an oil spill poisoning the calving grounds. Especially after all the work they did for the recovery program.
Granted, the spill referenced in the link above was pretty minor, but it’s not comforting…
Two things:
1: Producing our own oil tends to be less harmful to the environment than shipping it on large tankers to our shores.
2: Until we find a viable alternative, we need oil.
One other point bears mention:
If it is so important -and to avoid a debate, we can momentarily accept this as a given - then the “downlisting” of ANWAR should be done by Congress, not by Agency regulation. The very existence of controversy suggests that there is some question of compatibility, on a land protection designation that doesn’t allow for much.
Put another way, when National Wildlife Refuges and National Parks are created, the intent is to preserve the land parcel for conservation purposes, and everything else - duck hunting, ORV use, camping, farming, etc… - bears the burden of proof to show no significant impact and compatibility. This is the first time that such a designated land type [BLM don’t count] has the Interior Dept. saying internally “it’s OK”.
Whether or not you’re in favor of the drilling, there is enough question about Native American interests, risks of spills and other contaminants, fragmentation of habitat, etc… that rather than argue that case [note: Secretary Norton’s first speech to staff included comments to the effect that the Agency must develop the science to support the plan, setting scientific method on its ear] it should be preferable to acknowledge the political importance of the exploration, and put it to Congress to “redesignate” the land under the stewardship of BLM or something similar, where mining, etc… is a “compatible use”.
Otherwise, the slope gets pretty steep - next, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, whatever… at a whim.
nobody has answered the question about texas. i know that in the early twentieth century there were gusher wells that spewed hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil on the ground i am sure that in those days there was little if any effort to clean it up. How do these areas look today? Are they barren? Do they support plantlife? If they now support plants, how long did it take before the plants came back?
Common sense would tell me thatland in a climate like texas would recover much more quickly than alaska.
Well, I can’t say with certainty, since I’m Alaskan and not Texan, but I do know a few things. That early easy-to-find oil tended to be pretty “light”- IE, a large percentage of volitiles, stuff that evaporates easily.
I would hazard a guess that out of what blew in the gushers, probably better than half simply evaporated, leaving behind the thicker fractions, the asphalts and sulphurs.
That’s not to say the spills were therefore a “good thing”.
But it did very rapidly become standard practice to drill through a cap, so ‘gushers’ were contained. That saved both product, the cleanup, greatly reduced the fire hazard, etc. One has to remember that those first ‘gusher’ wells- actually the first were in Pennsylvania- were drilled in… what, the 1880’s? Thereabouts? Heck, when they “refined” it, they threw out or burned that part they called Benzein- what we now call gasoline. It was figured to be too powerful, too explosive to be of any use.
To answer the above question though, in my decade of oilfield-related work (that covered two oil fields, two natural gas fields, two small refineries, a tanker port and a LOT of process piping) I’ve never had the opprotunity to see if <i>crude</i>-oil-contaminated soil regenerates on it’s own. Mainly because there isn’t any.
The oily, greasy refinery image… well, that comes from the TV. Around here, if a <i>cupful</i> of oil- even fresh-from-the-can commercial motor oil, is spilled for some reason, and not reported, contained and cleanup begun within two hours, somebody will lose their job.
Now, that being said, I <i>have</i> seen grass and even small saplings growing in and around old motor-oil stains in old junkyards and the like.
As for spill areas “recovering” here in Alaska, if a spill happens, it will be <i>easier</i> to contain with the techniques that would be used in ANWR. The same techniques used for most of the North Slope production- drilling is ONLY done in the wintertime, on artificial pads and roads of ice. Any spill is usually contained, completely cleaned- even to the extent of shaving the top of the ice- and in the summertime, the entire pad and miles of road just melt away, leaving behind nothing but a wellhead (about the size of a phone booth) and a pipeline. No concrete pads, no footings, no pilings, no buildings, no nothing. The entire facility is literally trucked in, they drill for six to eight weeks, and it’s all trucked back out again.
I see a lot of validity on both sides. Overall, the oil&gas industry in North America has done wonders to improve the safety and environmental issues surrounding their work. But, the Arctic environment is very fragile. One set of tracks left by a bulldozer in the tundra will be there years later.
And people react given their available knowlegebase. The messes left behind by the DEW line installations are still fresh and still poisoning people. The White Pass & Yukon Route company got their hands slapped a few years ago for a waste oil dump along the tracks in ummm, Skagway I think. Somewhere between Skagway and Carcross, anyways. The media has given much coverage to the oil spills in the ocean (I know, different entirely)and the whacking huge spills in Russia.
Freaks people out, y’know. You and I can see the differences in the situations described above, and what might happen on the calving grounds. But to many up here, it’s all one and the same. It’s hard to be objective and analytical when your livelihood’s at stake. An endangered livelihood, at that.
On the other hand, I also understand the need not to be quite so dependent on outside interests for a resource in such high demand and short supply. It’s especially frustrating to have it right under your nose, and not be able to use it. But isn’t the technology available to reduce that demand?
It’s all well and good to talk about possibilities and estimated recovery time, but I think we need to KNOW more before we mess with somebody’s food supply. I haven’t heard of any plans to feed Old Crow should the unthinkable happen…
Doc, what would you say to the alternate method of opening it up ?
Jorge- “Alternate”?
Sorry, I’m a get-your-hands-dirty grunt, not a political animal.
I think I understand what your saying- today ANWR, tomorrow, what if they discover oil in Teddy Roosevelt’s head at Mt. Rushmore (to borrow a Simpsons’ plot bit.)
First off, 92% of the Refuge’s 19-some-odd million acres are already permanently closed to development- and that includes no roads, no buildings, drilling, airstrips, etc.
And would remain untouched even if the rest were indeed opened to exploration.
As for stewardship via the BLM or another agency… Um, ask me where I think the pipe should go, not who I think should tell me where the pipe needs to be.
It’s my opinion drilling should be allowed. I’ll leave it to others to hammer out the details.
I’m mainly in this topic because I don’t easily suffer fools- those who believe the “only six months worth so don’t even bother” argument, for example. (The commonly-accepted middle figure estimate of ANWR’s potential is a little greater than that of the existing North Slope fields, which has been providing roughly 25% of America’s domestic crude oil production for well over twenty-five years.)
tisiphone- No offense, but that’s another thing, the “calving grounds”. The herd they call the Central Arctic have been calving IN the Prudhoe and Kuparuk drilling areas for over twenty-five years. That same herd has roughly tripled in population in that time period…
In the ANWR area, that herd’s normal range covers literally millions of acres, with their normal calving grounds occupying a large percentage of that at any given time. Drilling pads will barely be a fraction of one precent of that. And as I mentioned above, the current plans don’t even ALLOW drilling- or any other operation other than monitoring- except for six to eight weeks in the deepest winter.
Am I ranting again?
Probably, but not much. Not enough for the Pit, anyways. 
Personally, I’m somewhere in the middle of all this.
Fanatics from both sides have made themselves EXTREMELY unpopular in the North. FOW (Friends of the Wolf), Curraugh Resources, and Satan are pretty much lumped together by many around here.
disclaimer - I don’t really speak for all Northerners,of course, but for myself and a bunch of people I know and talk to semi-regularly. Mostly in the Yukon.
However, the restrictions that you mentioned on when and how the drilling would take place don’t seem to be common knowledge. Dunno if that’s a societal bias in that nobody wants to believe anything positive about the oil & gas industry, or it just hasn’t been properly explained and publicised yet.
Let me explain. Public meetings and information sessions only get you so far up here…there’s an instinctive revulsion on the part of many Northerners to a man in a suit. “Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help you!” We’d like to see the guy who would be doing the cleanup tell us how he’s going to do it. Send the foreman of the crew, politically incorrect soul that he may be - at least we know he isn’t bsing us. In fact, send us you. You tell us how it’s done, and we’ll likely believe you.
As I said, I’d like to think it’s possible to balance both needs. But I would like to know things like : how long doesit take the area to recover in case of a spill, how far up the food chain it will go and what methods can be used to recover an area. I would like to hear it with cites and scientific studies not funded by either Greenpeace, Earth First, Exxon, or Shell. In fact, if you have any extra info on the spill in that story I linked to earlier, please e-mail me. I’d be interested in following any long-term studies…
Others I have talked to want to be comfortable with the idea that emergency drills will be regular and taken seriously. Same with the maintenance. How’s the remote monitoring system working? How’s the response time to an alarm? Rusted-out collars slowly leaking hydrocarbons into one of the more delicate environments on earth is not a pleasant thought. And we’ve seen it - or analogues to that situation, anyways.
However, it may be a moot point for the next year or so, anyways. Maybe that’ll get us past the unrestricted access vs. complete noninterference hysteria down to the real science of the whole idea.
Perched firmly on my fence, but with a definite lean,
Tisiphone