Now that the House and the Senate have confirmed the federal budget, it looks like oil drilling in the Arctic is closer to
reality:
After decades of trying to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration, backers of drilling said Friday that they were closer than ever now that Congress had adopted a budget.
The $2.56 trillion federal budget for 2006, adopted late Thursday night by the House and Senate, includes a provision that Congress can open the refuge by enacting a particular kind of legislation, called "a reconciliation," that is not vulnerable to Senate filibusters, which have been used to kill such drilling measures in the past.
Majorities in both chambers have already voiced support of Arctic drilling this year. The House approved broad energy legislation last week that includes a drilling provision. In the Senate, lawmakers voted narrowly in favor of drilling last month, when the issue came up in connection with the budget.
"A majority in the Senate support it and a majority in the House support it," Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California and the chairman of the House Resources Committee, said on Friday. "So I think it's going to happen, after 25 years of fighting over it."
(Emphasis mine)
In other words, the provision sneaks Arctic oil drilling in the back door.
There's more below the fold.
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) doesn't think drilling is inevitable. She's a little vague, however:
But Senator Maria Cantwell, the Washington Democrat who has been a strong opponent of drilling, said the budget did not make oil exploration in the refuge "an inevitability," especially given the close votes on the budget itself in both chambers.
"I don't think that the reconciliation is a slam-dunk," Ms. Cantwell said.
President Bush has made drilling in the refuge a central component of his energy policy, and he raised the issue again on Thursday night in his televised news conference. But with oil prices soaring and polls showing public disaffection with the way the White House is handling the issue, Ms. Cantwell said, she hoped the national debate would turn away from drilling in the wildlife refuge and toward "solutions that will matter instead of long-touted political issues."
Kossack geologists: what are the specifics involved in drilling there? What is the quality of the oil?
One interesting piece of information on the oil industry in Alaska (specifically, the Arctic Wildlife Reserve) was in an article in the Guardian from a month ago:
At this time of year the view from Kaktovik is snow-white in every direction, leaving little to distinguish the churned pack ice of the Beaufort Sea from the tundra of the Alaskan coastal plain.
Even this village, the only human settlement in the 19m acres (7.7m hectares) of the arctic national wildlife refuge and one of the most remote communities in the US, is scarcely visible beneath the drifts left by winter blizzards. From the air it is a barely perceptible dark patch clinging to the northern edge of Alaska.
The sole hint of colour in the whole panorama is a thin yellow band on the western horizon. It is the haze drifting in from the oilfields 100 miles up the coast: an unsightly stain on a picture postcard and a possible portent for the refuge.
[snip]
The oilfields at Prudhoe Bay have not turned out to be the ecological showpieces the Inupiat were promised. More oil was found than expected and the drilling rigs, roads and pipelines now dominate the landscape. There is an average of more than one toxic spill a day; 43,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides are released into the air each year, more than in Washington DC.
"It's not just the air," Mr Inglangasak said. "Every time it rains our fish get it and our whales get it. You can feel the difference when you hold the fish now. The flesh is not as firm as it once was."
So, obviously, you have to take the cumulative effects of the oil industry into account, not just the general "they're going to drill in the Arctic" line you hear over and over again.
Finally, please check out an editorial written by an Alaskan photographer, Douglas Yates. If you think that Alaskans support oil drilling, that editorial should change your mind. Also, click here for his photo essay on the Alaskan coastal plain, and see the haze from the oil fields.