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December 22, 2005
ANWR Gets A Reprieve
By: Rowan
The Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has gotten a brief reprieve after senators were successful in having it removed from the Defense Appropriations package. However, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska has vowed to fight on to open ANWR to drilling. In a report on last night's "Nightline," they characterized Steven's passion on ANWR drilling as a "vision." What kind of person has a "vision" of destroying such a place? A vision of roads, and rigs, and pipelines crossing the Alaskan tundra? More likely, it is a vision of the green piling up in his bank account.
The whole plan seems increasingly questionable - if no down right stupid. The Arctic permafrost is melting. The effects of this are already being felt as the permafrost collapses under roads, homes, and yes ... the Alaskan pipeline. Currently, portions of the pipeline are refrigerated to keep the permafrost around them frozen (and hence not subside). Now they want to build new roads, new facilities, a new infrastructure in order to drill in ANWR. Are they going to "refrigerate" all of those as well to keep them functioning? If so, the scale and cost of this project is going to skyrocket. Not to mention that a significant portion of the oil extracted would have to go to power generation to keep the damn system running. Without it, the oil rigs will likely topple, the roads become impassible, and the pipeline will leak like a sieve.
There are a million reasons to just drop the whole idea of opening ANWR to drilling, but the oil interests just won't let go. The oil companies won't let go. In fact, BP and Exxon Mobil are being sued for trying to manipulate natural gas prices in Alaska. Since it is these same companies that would control the oil and gas out of ANWR, do we really want to give a them a helping hand?
I truly don't see how some of our elected representatives (including the President) can continue to push for this. Beyond the big money interests, the costs far outweigh the gains of such a course. Unless, someone else (the U.S. taxpayer) is going to absorb the costs for keeping such a boondoggle running. If we bear the costs, then anything they could extract from ANWR would be pure profit.
Posted by Rowan at December 22, 2005 09:10 AM Category: Peak Oil --- Social Implications