Protecting the

    Arctic Refuge

Caribou on the ice of the Clarence River.

Caribou on Clarence River Ice, Arctic Refuge.

There are many compelling reasons to protect the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Here are a few of them:

  • The Gwich’in of the Arctic depend on the Porcupine Caribou Herd,
  • The Porcupine herd depends on their traditional calving grounds on the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge,
  • Because of climate change, any oil that might lie under the Refuge is better left alone. If we have the courage to leave the oil under the tundra where it belongs, Malkolm’s generation will have a brighter future.
  • Many migratory birds depend upon the critical nesting and feeding habitat they seek out in the Refuge,
  • Mammals such as polar and grizzly bears and musk-oxen rely on the Arctic Refuge,
  • Marine animals such as seals (bearded & ringed), whales (beluga and bowhead) and fish depend upon the relatively unpolluted Arctic Ocean,
  • The coastal plain (known as America’s Serengeti) is the biological heart of an ecosystem that extends south in Alaska and east into Canada.

We think that many of drilling proponents’ justifications for oil development are not reasonable or believable:

  • The price of oil will drop if we drill in the Refuge (any oil that may lie under the Refuge would be a tiny part of the world oil market and not affect prices)
  • We need to drill for US national security (even if we authorized drilling tomorrow, no oil would flow for 10 years . . . and there is no guarantee that oil would not be shipped to the far east. We would achieve far more by conservation and investing in safer alternatives.)
  • We would only use 2000-acres of the Refuge to drill (totally bogus – for example they don’t use pipelines in their calculations – except for the part of the supports that actually touch the ground.)
  • Caribou are not affected by oil development (most caribou biologists and ecologists say that oil development in coastal plain would negatively impact the Porcupine herd.
  • The oil industry can now safely drill for oil (the largest ever oil spill – 200,000 gallons – occurred on Alaska’s north slope in 2006. Following that, BP shut down it’s Prudhoe Bay operations because of faulty equipment and corroding pipelines.)

For more information, visit one of these websites:

The following passage was written by Ken a few years ago, in Under the Arctic Sun. It discusses “safe” oil development and the “2000-acre limitation:”

New, “cleaner, safer” oil development
Alaska’s northern oil development sprawls across more than 1000 square miles of arctic tundra. There are thousands of miles of roads and pipelines and more than 55 contaminated sites. The oilfields emit more than 56,000 tons of smog and acid-rain producing nitrogen oxides every year (more than the states of Vermont or Rhode Island). And the oil and chemical spills go on, day after day, year after year - an average of more than one spill a day. Some are small, but many are huge. In the spring of 2001, there were three spills of more than 10,000 gallons. In April, 2001, 92,000 gallons spewed onto the tundra in the Kuparuk oilfield.

Despite evidence to the contrary, oil companies tell us that they are kinder and gentler than they used to be. British Petroleum (who paid $22 million in criminal and civil fines for illegally disposing of hazardous wastes at its “model” Endicott oil field in 1999) says in its ads that BP stands for Beyond Petroleum and that it is the Green Alternative. In early March, 2002, a BP worker met with Senators Joseph Lieberman and Bob Graham. He said that working for BP is “like working for a drunk driver that is your boss and insists on driving you home.” He claimed that maintenance backlogs and employee shortages was worsening the threat of serious oil spills at Prudhoe Bay.

When the House of Representatives passed their energy bill in the summer of 2001, they even promised to use only 2,000 acres of the 1.5 million acre coastal plain. Drilling proponents say that oil development would only cover the same surface area as the Dulles Airport. On March 12, 2002, Senator Murkowski stood up on the Senate floor with a map of the Arctic Refuge. He pointed to a small rectangle on the coastal plain to show just how tiny the “footprint” of development would be.

Some newspapers have printed editorials saying that the “2000-acre limitation” demonstrates that the oil industry can now be a good steward of the Arctic Refuge. We can have our oil and polar bears too. Unfortunately, the notion that oil development could be confined to a concise 2,000 acre area is as illusory as an arctic mirage.

The 2,000-acre limitation only applies to “surface acreage covered by production and support facilities.” It doesn’t apply to seismic or other exploration activities, which have forever altered the arctic environment to the west. It doesn’t include gravel mines or roads. Since it applies only to “surface acreage,” the 2,000-acre limitation does not apply to pipelines that are elevated above the tundra - only to the vertical supports that actually touch the ground.

The Alpine oil field to the west of Prudhoe Bay contains 37 miles of pipelines. If we apply the oil industry’s “new math,” that would use up less than one-quarter of an acre. Paul Krugman of the New York Times recently calculated that his work “impact” is only a few square inches – the bottom of the legs on his desk and chair and the soles of his shoes. The rest of his office is pristine wilderness. Theoretically, British Petroleum or Exxon could blanket the Refuge with 296,000 miles of pipeline and still not exceed the 2000-acre limitation.

The US Geological Survey says that the oil under the coastal plain is not in a single large pool, but is spread across the coastal plain in about thirty-five smaller deposits. Drill sites would be spread across a vast landscape, and interconnected with a network of roads and pipelines. Wild creatures do not understand that the 2,000-acre limitation is good for them. As I discovered when I was in the calving grounds, caribou are affected by even a lone human at a distance. Biologists have shown that there is decreased caribou calving within a 2.5-mile zone of roads and pipelines. They are also fearful that oil development infrastructure would hamper the migration of the great aggregations of the Porcupine Caribou Herd.

Imagine the world’s largest drift-net. Imagine bunching it up and dropping it on the tundra, where it would cover 2,000 acres. Then take the net, spread it out, and fling it into the Pacific where it would scoop up nearly everything in its path. That is a more realistic analogy for the 2,000-acre limitation than Senator Murkowski’s tiny rectangle on a big map.

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