Crossposted from SmokeyMonkey.org.
The United States House of Representatives passed H.R.5429, the American-Made Energy and Good Jobs Act. This bill has one purpose: open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas exploration.
This is a yearly battle, and most should be aware that this is a bill for oil companies and their lobbyists and provides neither American-made energy, nor good jobs, but rather provides leases to big oil companies to destroy the most pristine Arctic ecosystem on the planet. The motivation is greed, pure and simple.
The bill contains flowery language about protecting the environment and restoring the land once drilling has been performed. However, the cost to the environment is not considered. Below, let me make the case that there is no such thing as environmentally friendly exploratory drilling.
The Alaska Wilderness League has a fantastic website with a bunch of resources. At the very bottom of the page linked above, find the slideshows of Prudhoe Bay drilling and a tour of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain (the area that would be opened to drilling). The pictures there tell the tale.
Another terrific site is SaveArcticRefuge.org. Let me ask you how you think the 60,000 caribou in the picture below get around the 1100 miles of pipeline already laid?
The answer is: They don't. The Prudhoe Bay drilling fields have all but eliminated the ecological diversity to ANWR's west. Besides the intrusion in an otherwise pristine landscape, these pipelines frequently leak or rupture. The Alaskan north shore has experienced an average of more than one leak per day. In fact, the largest oil spill in north slope history just occured this year.
To push forward with drilling in America's largest wildlife refuge, a refuge that is a unique treasure available nowhere else in the world, is simply an exercize in corporate greed and political corruption. There is simply no argument for any further drilling in Alaska. The arguments against are numerous.
One of the most popular pieces of anti-drilling writing comes from Jason Leopold (recently of truthout.org fame, but we won't hold that against his previous work), entitled Drilling and Spilling in ANWR. In it, he makes the case quite well that no further exploration or drilling should occur until big oil cleans up its act in the existing oil fields and pipelines. Not only do spills continue to occur, but the companies responsible often lie to conceal them.
"In this case, the drilling rig operators did not feel this type of event qualified for reporting," Beaudo told the Anchorage Daily News in March. "Obviously the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation felt otherwise and that's what they're saying as a result of their investigation. It's a matter of interpretation." Beaudo said the agency's findings are in line with BP's own investigation that the spills did not cause any harm to the environment, aside from some speckles on the snow.
Gallons of toxic crude oil spilled into the environment should not be left up to "interpretation", for any spill that requires reporting (any spill over 55 gallons) is more than "some speckles".
And we are not just talking about spills. Exploration and drilling is a messy business. For one thing, we are talking about drilling in an arctic tundra zone. Some five feet of gravel needs to be poured to keep the roadways that trucks and other vehicles use to get to the facilities from being affected by the permafrost. Dozens of gravel mines have destroyed ecosystems along the rivers and streams in order to provide these roadways.
Then there are the abandoned sites. Perhaps oil was not found at the site, perhaps the company went out of business. I found this report on the costs of DR&R (dismantlement, removal, and restoration) at a couple of sites in the Alaskan north slope quite interesting although summary in nature.
The issue of DR&R in the North Slope is not just a theor[et]ical [sic] problem of the future. Already, many drilling sites in Alaska have been abandoned. Some of the companies responsible for these "orphan sites" did not have the interest or money to clean the sites properly. Some of these areas contain contaminates; others are simply a wasteland of old buildings, oil barrels, pipes, and other trash. Two recent examples of "orphan sites" are Service City and Malaspina. Estimates from BP Exploration in cooperation with the Department of Natural Resources, and other oil companies say 10,000 tons of steel and 10,000 pounds of solid waste were abandoned in Service City.
The report goes on to suggest that there are 14 such sites that need DR&R right now. There are likely others that are unreported.
This is not a difficult decision or any sort of debate. It is a conflict between those that care more for money than the environment and those that realize that nothing is more valuable than the biological diversity of our planet. The choice is not only simple, it should be obvious for all Americans. No one, save big oil companies - and probably Alaskan politicians - benefits from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is greed alone that brings this up every year.