Is Congress doing the right thing by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration? Yes. by Sen. Lisa Murkowski
But if Arctic oil development was going to harm the environment or wildlife, then I would agree opening it would not be worth the cost. But the vast majority of Alaskans, including Alaska’s Eskimos who know it best, support ANWR’s development because we know 21st-century technology guarantees the land’s protection.
Planet Ark : Pipe Leak Spews Gas, Oil at Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay
An estimated 1.4 million cubic feetof natural gas and an unknown quantity of crude oil spewed from a leak in a pipeline at the Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska’s North Slope, state environmental regulators said Tuesday.
The resulting mist of crude oil coated an area nearly a mile long and averaged about 300 feet wide, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement.
adn.com | alaska : Oil spill set at 10-30 barrels
That’s not a large spill compared with others that have occurred since the Prudhoe oil field production began 28 years ago. But the spill was remarkable because of the large area it touched.
US Republicans set to turn Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into oilfield by Svend Soeyland
Several leaks caused by current drilling in Alaska have been reported, and the Exxon Valdez incident in 1989 released crude oil in a coastal zone and kept oil development efforts at bay for some years. Most recently on March 26th this year, some 500,000 litres of produced water was spilled onto the frozen tundra. In March 1997, some 1.8 million litres of diluted seawater were spilled, causing widespread salination. …
Previous exploration activities in Alaska have left massive oil spills, abandoned roads and waste deposits that have caused irreparable damage to the sensitive permafrost environment. Development advocates argue that improved exploration methods will result in smaller environmentally damaging “foot-prints.”? A study by the American Academy of Sciences form 2003 concluded that activities of the magnitude proposed for ANWR will include access roads, air strips, disposal sites, housing and other infrastructure in addition to the oil wells that, as the history of oil drilling in Alaska shows, will be left abandoned once the proposed 2015-2020 project is complete.
A recent study released by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) states that Alaska is already demonstrating tangible evidence of climate change. Due to thawing of permafrost, entire coastal communities, such as Surmac, have to relocate further inland. Oil and gas pipelines are sinking in the melting permafrost and vegetation is threatened. Migration by non-native animal species, and possibly mosquitoes carrying the fatal Nile virus have been facilitated by this climatic shift, claims the ACIA study.