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Drilling ANWR: One of Our Last Links to the Wild World is in Danger

August 19, 2018

Drilling ANWR: One of Our Last Links to the Wild World is in Danger

I can still remember the first time I saw tracks left behind by seismic testing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

It was the mid-1990s and I had been guiding a group of people on a float trip across the coastal plain of the refuge towards the Arctic Ocean. After seven days of traveling through the wildest country I’d ever seen, I was out on a late evening walk and I saw what were clearly tire tracks crossing the tundra.

I couldn’t believe it. We were hundreds of miles from the nearest road or motorized vehicle, but there they were.

For those who’ve never been to the Arctic Refuge, it can be hard to imagine a place so far removed from the busy streets and office buildings most of us encounter every day.

One of the world’s last intact ecosystems, the Arctic Refuge is home to some of the most abundant and diverse wildlife anywhere in the world, including more than 200 wildlife species. Its coastal plain is where the porcupine caribou herd travel to birth their young and is the most important denning site for polar bears in the United States.

The 19 million acre refuge is one of the few places in the United States that has never seen the impact of Western society. There are no roads, buildings, or permanent structures of any kind there. For decades, this special place has been protected from industrial activity.

And yet, to this day, tracks left from seismic exploration that took place in the 1980s are still visible. Seeing this damage was jarring, to say the least — and it could soon get much worse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Americans Will Never Agree on Oil Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

December 31, 2017

Why Americans Will Never Agree on Oil Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Mountains and meadows in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

After decades of bitter struggle, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge seems on the verge of being opened to the oil industry. The consensus tax bill Republicans recently passed retains this measure, which was added to gain the key vote of Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

This bill, however, stands no chance of being the final word. ANWR has been called America’s Serengeti and the last petroleum frontier, terms I’ve seen used over more than a decade studying this area and the politics around it. But even these titles merely hint at the multifold conflict ANWR represents — spanning politics, economics, culture and philosophy.

Differing Views From the Start

Little of this debate, which stretches back decades, makes sense without some background. Let’s begin with wildlife, the core of why the refuge exists.

With 45 species of land and marine mammals and over 200 species of birds from six continents, ANWR is more biodiverse than almost any area in the Arctic. This is especially true of the coastal plain portion, or 1002 Area, the area now being opened up to exploration and drilling. This has the largest number of polar bear dens in Alaska and supports muskoxen, Arctic wolves, foxes, hares and dozens of fish species. It also serves as temporary home for millions of migrating waterfowl and the Porcupine Caribou herd which has its calving ground there.

All of which merely suggests the unique concentration of life in ANWR and the opportunity it offers to scientific study. One part of the debate is therefore over how drilling might impact this diversity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Massive Energy Bill In The $1 Trillion Infrastructure Package

December 11, 2017

The Massive Energy Bill In The $1 Trillion Infrastructure Package

Electic

The GOP tax bill working its way through Congress contains provisions that have huge ramifications for the energy industry, but legislators in Washington may not be done yet.

A top Republican on energy issues, Senator Lisa Murkowski, is eyeing a sweeping piece of energy legislation for 2018. With her long-sought goal of opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) nearly a done deal, Murkowski has plans to tee up a bipartisan energy bill that could potentially break through the usual Washington logjam.

The Alaska Republican, according to Platts, is trying to pitch the energy bill as a way to spark momentum in the oft-cited but vague $1 trillion infrastructure plan supported by President Trump. In fact, the White House just said that President Trump would unveil “detailed legislative principles” for the massive infrastructure proposal in January. That would likely “serve as the building block” for the GOP bill, according to The Hill.

Moving such a monumental piece of legislation is much less likely with the GOP tax bill blowing a trillion-dollar hole in the budget deficit. But Senator Murkowski says she has the vehicle to get the bill moving, and wants to White House to look at it because it is “ready to go” and it is “already pre-vetted,” according to Platts.

What she is referring to is a bill that nearly got signed into law in 2016. Sen. Murkowski and her colleagues on the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee have worked on it for more than two years – in fact they have introduced the legislation for three years running. Related: Oil Price Boom Keeps Lid On Natural Gas Prices

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trump’s ANWR move could spawn epic oil, natural gas battle: Fuel for Thought

June 26, 2017

Trump’s ANWR move could spawn epic oil, natural gas battle: Fuel for Thought

Oil majors thirsty for reserves likely to line up for any lease sale

President Trump has uncorked yet another controversy over energy vs the environment and it promises to be a heavyweight battle.

The White House budget proposal includes a revenue line of almost $2 billion from selling oil and gas leases in the richly oil-prospective northeastern coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.

Until the climate change debate came along, leasing and drilling in the ANWR (pronounced an-war) Coastal Plain was arguably the most ferociously contested item on the oil and gas industry’s wish list at the national level.

First, a little background: In 1960, less than one year after Alaska became a state, Congress created the Arctic National Wildlife Range.

Twenty years later, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) expanded the Arctic Range to 18 million acres, renamed it the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, designated 8 million acres as National Wilderness, designated three rivers as National Wild Rivers, and called for wildlife studies and an oil and gas assessment of 1.5 million acres of the ANWR Coastal Plain (the 1002 area).

There is not enough space here to track the tortuous history of legal and regulatory battles and failed legislation that has marked efforts to either develop oil and gas in the ANWR Coastal Plain or to lock it up against development permanently.

Suffice to say that ANILCA granted surface and subsurface rights to the Inupiat Native Americans living near the North Slope village of Kaktovik on the ANWR Coastal Plain, seismic studies were conducted on Inupiat land, and what has been called the “the tightest hole of all time” (KIC-1) was drilled and plugged on that acreage by a group led by Chevron.

Only a handful of people have ever known the well results—and no one has spilled the beans yet.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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