Arctic National Oil Refuge

Arctic National Oil Refuge

In this day and age it is hard to find a person in America over the age of sixteen who doesn't own a vehicle. With all these vehicles driving around there is a need for a lot of gasoline otherwise known as petroleum or oil. Americans have gone to great lengths to keep a strong supply of gasoline at hand. Most of the American gasoline comes from places such as Saudi Arabia; luckily this is enough to keep our billions of cars, trucks, and SUV's moving. With a great need for oil comes the exploration of new places to get it. Alaska, the last frontier, is said to have one of the worlds largest oil fields, predicted by the United States Geological Survey to have billions or barrels of oil ans trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. So what is the hold up, why don't we just go and get it? The oil field is located on the ANWR or Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and that is the problem to at least some of the American citizens. Drilling in the ANWR is not an option. The effects the drilling will take on the environment, wildlife and our planet just is not worth it and that is the reason why we cannot let it happen.

Just beyond Brooks Range in northeast corner of Alaska lies the 19.8 million acre ANWR ;one of the largest preserves in the world. A portion (1.5 million acres) of the ANWR was set aside in 1980, section 1002 of the Alaskan National

Interest Lands Conservation Act for potential exploration and development. This was done because of the area's energy potential. Recently a battle has began over oil drilling in the ANWR and the environmental problems it would cause.

The United States has only 3% of the world's oil reserve, yet we consume more than 25% of the world's oil production(1). We are a nation that survives on gas and with prices on the rise Americans get nervous and search for cheaper and easier resources. When an answer to the question finally presents itself we usually take it to be the right one but this is an example of a answer that must first be thought through. If drilling in the ANWR would mean taking the lives of millions of helpless animals and scaring some of the last true wilderness we have for decades to come so that we could possibly save a dollar or two at the gas pump; would that still be a ethical solution to or oil shortage problem? Drilling in the ANWR is not that answer to our problems and will only create more.

Those who support oil drilling in the ANWR all preach the opposite, that it is a great answer to or problems. One of the leading advocates for the oil drilling is Gale Norton. In Norton's testimony to the House Committee of Resources on oil drilling in the ANWR she gives several reason why the drilling would not be damaging on the refuge. Norton first states that land was set aside in the Alaskan National Interest Land Conservation Act of 1980 because of its energy

potential. Norton's main point in her argument is that the land that would be drilled on is undesirable anyway. The Coastal Plain of the ANWR is 1.5 million acres of ice-cold tundra have almost nine months of winter and 56 days of total darkness. What Norton did not mention is that even though this landscape sounds so horrible, it is actually home to over 130,000 caribou which travel the 400 miles to the coast to graze and give birth in the summer months. It also inhabits tens of thousands of snow geese, tundra swans, shorebirds, waterfowl, arctic fox, wolves, shaggy ox, and polar bear that den there through the winter. All of these wild animals would be effected by the drilling.

Advocates for the drilling ensure that it will not effect the wildlife in any way because all the drilling will be done in the winter months. In opposition to these statements there are only simple facts. The noise, pollution, and construction accompanying this massive operation will drive away wildlife and leave scars on the land scape for centuries to come. The smell of up to 700 worker and the noise of vehicles ans enormous energy-generating turbines will have a direct effect on the wildlife and land. Problems with past oil drilling experiences in Alaska where things like oil drilling crews dumping garbage in the refuge, pipe lines and drilling rigs spilling oil, and large scares in the landscape from dump trucks.

Contradictory to this, many say that the jobs that will be created are more important than the animals. The really truth to that is, yes the jobs are very important to the people of Alaska but lets not jump to a solution. Jobs can be created with out the drilling of the ANWR. We can put those people to work building more gas efficient vehicles and other environment production companies.

Though all of those problems drilling would cause seem important and reasonable the advocates for drilling in the ANWR believe they can recover the oil and with none of the problems environmentalists worry so much about. The solution to these problems are simple. By operating only in the winter both the problem of disturbing wildlife and land scares are solved. The drilling pads and roads will be made of ice in which the water will be pumped from near by lakes and rivers. An opposing argument to this solution was given by the Fish and Wildlife Service In the winter the coastal plain becomes more of a "arctic desert." Most of the lakes freeze to the bottom and there is only enough river water to freeze and maintain only 10 miles of road. The Fish and Wildlife Service also added that "Maternal polar bears with newborn cubs could be prematurely displaced from their winter dens by oil exploration" being that they den along the river banks(3).

Environmentalists believe that the ANWR will end up turning out just like the drilling in Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk in Alaska where the environment has already be devastated. The president of the Natural Resources Defense Council claims that the once pristine wildlife of the Prudhoe Bay has become a toxic, industrial wasteland(1). The only reassurance from drillers and advocates for ANWR drilling could give is that the experience gained at Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk along with rapidly evolving