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Wed 15 Mar, 2006 06:07 pm
Editor's Note: The latest battle over Arctic drilling is scheduled to take place in the Senate on Thursday. Republicans have inserted the controversial measure into the budget to make it immune to filibuster and only require 51 votes to pass, rather than the usual 60. Senators John Kerry and Maria Cantwell are promoting an amendment that would strike drilling in the Arctic Refuge altogether.
-- kw/TO
Burst Oil Pipeline Causes "Catastrophe" in Alaska
By Andrew Gumbel
The Independent UK
Tuesday 14 March 2006
A burst pipeline in Alaska's North Slope has caused the Arctic region's worst oil spill, spreading more than 250,000 gallons of crude oil over an area used by caribou herds and prompting environmentalists again to question the Bush administration's drive for more oil exploration there.
The leak was first spotted by a British Petroleum worker 11 days ago, and was reported to have been plugged a few days later. Initial hopes expressed by BP that the spill was limited to a few tens of thousands of gallons proved to be over-optimistic. Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation has steadily increased its estimate of the size of the spill, the latest estimate putting it at around 265,000 gallons.
The leak, whose cause is unknown, occurred in a remote part of the most sparsely populated state in the United States, and it remains to be seen what damage, if any, it has done to ecosystems. It does, however, give grist to groups who have challenged Washington's assertion that oil can be prospected and shipped while leaving only the gentlest of "footprints" on the landscape.
"This historic oil spill is a catastrophe for the environment," Natalie Brandon, of the Alaska Wilderness League, said in a statement. "Tone-deaf politicians in Congress should now stop trying to push for more drilling through sneaky manoeuvres ... The fact that the oil spill occurred in a caribou crossing area in Prudhoe Bay is a painful reminder of the reality of unchecked oil and gas development across Alaska's North Slope."
The biggest battle has been over the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, also on the North Slope, which the White House wants to open up. The initiative, championed from the moment the Bush administration took office in 2001, has been consistently blocked by Congress but is periodically revived.
A second battle, meanwhile, is taking place in a previously untouched corner of the National Petroleum Reserve on the North Slope. The Bush administration has allowed oil companies to prospect for oil and gas in an area covering 389,000 acres. Environmental groups have responded with a federal lawsuit, filed last Friday, in which they contend that the Department of the Interior has violated the Endangered Species Act and other laws in an area noted for its flocks of migratory geese.
It is not just environmentalists who oppose the administration's plans. Several prominent energy analysts, as well as Washington politicians, argue that the likely yield in unexplored areas of the North Slope is not large enough to justify the intrusion.
Alaskan politicians and industry lobby groups are heavily in favour of expanding exploration as it would bring jobs and other benefits to the state economy. The Bush administration, meanwhile, argues that further domestic exploration is essential if the United States wants to decrease its dependence on oil and gas from the Middle East.
Accidents and leaks have periodically occurred on the North Slope, and along the trans-Alaska pipeline that takes crude from Prudhoe Bay across two mountain ranges to the port of Valdez on the shores of the North Pacific. Saboteurs blew up a section of pipeline shortly after it opened in the 1970s, starting a major spillage. A hunter accidentally fired into the pipeline five years ago, causing $7m (£3.6m) worth of damage.
No place in the article does it say how many acres were effected by this spill, nor when in the year is this area used by wild life for migration.
It is now March. I would imagine that minutes after exiting the pipeline leak, the spilled oil would be frozen solid. It would then be a simple matter to bulldoze it up.
My guess is that only a few hundred acres were effected, and two months from now no one will be able to tell that anything happened. I am anxiously awaiting the follow-up article from The Independent UK to tell us all what the long term effect actually was.
This article answers a bit more Jim's questions:
Quote:Article Last Updated: 3/15/2006 06:45 PM
Oil impact
By Ali Reed, CBS 11 News Reporter
KTVA
Cleanup efforts continue on the North Slope for the oil spill that happened at a BP facility nearly two weeks ago. Officials now think corrosion may have been responsible for the tiny hole that leaked the oil, which they speculate could have been dripping for at least five days before it was discovered.
BP managers say the spill could mean a significant decrease in oil production over the next few weeks. This reduction will cost the state a pretty penny.
Officials estimate the reduced level of production will cost our state about one million dollars a day until it's cleaned up.
Since the spill, the leaky pipe has been shut down. This has caused the North Slope oil production output to drop by 12 percent. With BP managers saying it will take at least two weeks until production is back to normal, it looks like our state will be losing a lot of money.
Officials say the spill also had an environmental impact--with just under two acres of tundra affected. Leslie Pearson from the Department of Environmental Conservation spent seven days on the slope, surveying the damage. She says, as of today, they've removed most of the contaminated snow from the area. They hope to get a tundra cleanup plan approved Wednesday. She says it's too soon to know the impact of the damage.
"Impact would primarily be to tundra. I mean we don't have any wildlife impacts at all. And that will probably be minimal to where there was greater concentrations of oil in the tundra. And that revegetation will just take time," said Leslie Pearson, Emergency Response Manager, D.E.C.
We did contact officials at BP today. They tell us that they're "compelled to clean up the spill to the standards that the state requires."
Something else to think about: a debate about ANWR will take place on the Senate floor either Wednesday night or Thursday. So we'll let you know if those discussions were influenced by this oil spill.
Source
No catastrophe here.
If Congress has any intelligence at all, it will vote for drilling in ANWR. If it fails again, we can all lay the blame squarely in the lap of the Democrats, and we should never have to endure again any Democrat complaining about the price of gasoline.
Go to California, only one example, and check out natural oil reservoirs exposed at the surface of the ground. When some of the first explorers came to the LA area, natural "oil slicks" were observed on the water. The La Brea tar pits are examples of prehistoric "oil spills" caused by nature, in which numerous animals met their deaths and are now preserved as fossils. But the La Brea tar pits are only minor examples of numerous localities. Tar sand and oil shale rock exposures are numerous in North America.
Just because some oil spills onto the ground is no reason to panic here. The oil is a naturally formed substance that was formed in the ground and came from the ground. I am all in favor of cleaning it up, but just pointing out that it is not some foreign toxic substance we are dealing with here.
Walter, I think you need to amend your map so that the petroleum producing area would only comprise a very very small area within what you are calling the Petroleum Reserve.
okie wrote:Walter, I think you need to amend your map so that the petroleum producing area would only comprise a very very small area within what you are calling the Petroleum Reserve.
And I think, the US Department Of Interior wouldn't agree when I changed their map.
okie wrote:Just because some oil spills onto the ground is no reason to panic here. The oil is a naturally formed substance that was formed in the ground and came from the ground. I am all in favor of cleaning it up, but just pointing out that it is not some foreign toxic substance we are dealing with here.
When radioactive radiation was discovered, soon little party-sets became fashionable. People would have film plates and a radiation source, and they would take photographs of their bones. It was considered tremendously funny.
Of course, later people began to understand the connection between that radioactive, "naturally formed substance that was formed in the ground" and why so many people were dying from cancer.
But before that, most people were living quite happily with your kind of mentality.
Walter Hinteler wrote:okie wrote:Walter, I think you need to amend your map so that the petroleum producing area would only comprise a very very small area within what you are calling the Petroleum Reserve.
And I think, the US Department Of Interior wouldn't agree when I changed their map.
My apologies, you are absolutely right there. My comment was a knee jerk comment to try to point out the actual small area required to produce the oil, which is often the focus of the heated debate here concerning ANWR between those that give environmental fears higher priority over energy needs.
old europe wrote:okie wrote:Just because some oil spills onto the ground is no reason to panic here. The oil is a naturally formed substance that was formed in the ground and came from the ground. I am all in favor of cleaning it up, but just pointing out that it is not some foreign toxic substance we are dealing with here.
When radioactive radiation was discovered, soon little party-sets became fashionable. People would have film plates and a radiation source, and they would take photographs of their bones. It was considered tremendously funny.
Of course, later people began to understand the connection between that radioactive, "naturally formed substance that was formed in the ground" and why so many people were dying from cancer.
But before that, most people were living quite happily with your kind of mentality.
Good point, but I would submit that radioactivity is present throughout the earths crust in varying amounts. Sandstones are generally lower, shales a bit higher, and some granites and similar rocks are higher in natural uranium content. The ironic thing is that I personally know that many affluent people, probably unknown to them, and probably many of the same people are strident environmentalists, have built their mult-million dollar homes nestled in the rocks in the Rocky Mountain region, which contain some fairly radioactive rock units in certain areas, in terms of natural background uranium content, perhaps at least 3 to maybe 5 times the normal in other areas. Point being here is that you cannot escape radioactivity if you tried.
Quote:No catastrophe here.
If Congress has any intelligence at all, it will vote for drilling in ANWR. If it fails again, we can all lay the blame squarely in the lap of the Democrats, and we should never have to endure again any Democrat complaining about the price of gasoline.
This is ridiculous. ANWR won't produce enough oil to drop the price of anything!
Cycloptichorn
"This is ridiculous. ANWR won't produce enough oil to drop the price of anything!" True.
okie wrote:Good point, but I would submit that radioactivity is present throughout the earths crust in varying amounts.
Absolutely. However, "natural" and "harmless" are not necessarily the same - which was your original point, I believe.....
If ANWR increased domestic U.S. oil reserves by almost 50% over what it would be without it, it would not affect anything? Ooookay. Believe what you want. It may not reduce the price, but at some point down the road, if developed, I believe it would prevent the price from climbing as fast. And it would relieve the pressure slightly on the reliance on foreign oil. I thought thats what all the politicians wanted, even the Democrats?
old europe wrote:okie wrote:Good point, but I would submit that radioactivity is present throughout the earths crust in varying amounts.
Absolutely. However, "natural" and "harmless" are not necessarily the same - which was your original point, I believe.....
"Natural" and "harmless" are not necessarily synonomous, I agree, but being natural does lend credence to the fact that panic is not necessarily called for here. The situation needs to be based on fact, not emotion.
Many things are necessary to sustain healthy life, but if applied or exposed in excess, are harmful. We have regulations on minerals in water, but at the same time people go to the health food stores to buy mineral supplements with the very same minerals that are otherwise regulated. This whole subject is interesting, and I think very poorly understood by even scientists, let alone the public. Unfortunately, many environmentalists believe we live in some kind of pristine environment free of all toxic substances, and that only man is producing the toxic substances, which is really not accurate at all.
Quote:The report, issued by the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, said that if Congress gave the go-ahead to pump oil from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the crude could begin flowing by 2013 and reach a peak of 876,000 barrels a day by 2025.
But even at peak production, the EIA analysis said, the United States would still have to import two-thirds of its oil, as opposed to an expected 70 percent if the refuge's oil remained off the market.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4542853/
So, in about 20 years, we will import 4% less oil by drilling in ANWR, according to reports. Hardly a back-breaker for our economy, that 4%.
The Democratic party is looking further than you; we envision a much greater plan to end our dependency on foreign oil: end our transportation dependency on crude oil altogether, through the formation of synthetics, biofuels, renewable energy, etc. We will always need some crude oil for plastics and the like; but plastics aren't wasted. They can be recycled. Gasoline is
gone once it is used, except for some really harmful emissions that it leaves about.
Real plans for reducing our dependence on Oil, not just Foreign oil, don't call for added drilling in environmentally sensitive sites!
Cycloptichorn
Walter, to follow up your post, to address Cycloptichorn, % production is not the same as proven domestic recoverable oil reserves. Your 4% figure depends upon who's statistics you cite. The fact remains all we have are estimates, but experts say this would likely be one of the largest domestic oil reserves ever discovered. Based on Cycloptichorn's reasoning, we would have never drilled a single oil well anywhere in the country.
I personally think it is arrogant, as a country, to deem our own country too precious to litter with a pumpjack, but we don't mind doing that virtually everywhere else to secure the oil. We have the technology and the knowhow to extract the oil from ANWR with minimal environmental disturbance, and the truth is that it would affect only a very small percentage of the refuge.
I am in favor of new technology, but until it proves feasible by competing in the marketplace, it hasn't proven anything. The free market is the best arbitor of the next most efficient energy source. The fact is that oil is now the most efficient and cheapest method of fueling much of our current economy. When the next technology supplants it because of technological advancement and competitive advantage, I am 100% for it.
Quote:Based on Cycloptichorn's reasoning, we would have never drilled a single oil well anywhere in the country.
Well, we can't go back and un-drill wells that are already there, and we didn't know for a long time just what the impacts are/were of drilling. Plus, many of the drilling sites in America are not in fact Environmentally sensitive; here in Texas, most of them are out in the middle of nowhere, with no birds, caribou, or anything around in case of accident.
I have zero doubt that those who proposed the pipeline in Alaska which spilled all this oil also billed it as 'clean and safe' for the environment; and look how well that turned out.
Cycloptichorn
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