Senate Votes to Allow Underwater Drilling in the Arctic

President Bush scored a major policy victory this week when a closely divided Senate voted to approve underwater drilling in the arctic by a margin of 51-49. When the president initially proposed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil exploration, the Alaskan nature preserve was still a frozen wilderness inhabited by polar bears, musk oxen and caribou. As a result of global warming, however, 70% of the refuge is now covered by water.

Arrival of rigs could spare polar bears, other rare species, from watery death

By Deanna Swift

FAIRBANKS, AK—The US Senate handed President Bush a major policy victory this week by voting to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or ANWR to underwater drilling. The vote is a dream come true for the oil industry, which has sought access to the refuge for more than two decades.

But while supporters of the measure applauded the vote, noting that ANWR may contain enough oil to fuel American cars, trucks and SUV's for nearly one and a half years, others warn that the process of extracting oil from the environmentally sensitive refuge may prove far more costly than either the administration, or its allies in the petroleum industry, had anticipated. 

The problem: thanks to accelerating climate change, much of the arctic refuge is now under water. According to an eight-nation report put together by 250 scientists, warmer temperatures have caused the Arctic ice cap to shrink by as much as 20%, eroding the habitat of polar bears, sending Inuit hunters plummeting through the ice and leaving huge swathes of the region under water.

Offshore drilling rigs needed?
Original plans to extract as much as 11 billion barrels of oil from beneath ANWR's coastal plain involved bringing in millions of tons of equipment and drilling holes of up to 15 thousand feet deep through the ice shelf. But with most of that ice shelf now melted, oil companies including ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobile will have to consider transporting offshore-drilling rigs that can float on top of the underwater reserve.

The rigs, know as Jack-Ups, equipment resembling a moon-landing craft that can be used in water depths of 10-100 meters, will be extremely costly to transport, says petroleum industry analyst Dale Burnie, and even more expensive to operate. "Underwater oil exploration is a costly proposition in the best of circumstances. Your maintenance and operating costs are already pretty high. But in an Arctic environment you're dealing with temps that put the equipment itself at risk," says Burnie. "It's the worst of both worlds."

Good news for polar bears
Environmentalists have long argued that opening ANWR to oil exploration could threaten the polar bears, musk oxen, caribou and millions of migratory birds that live and breed there, many of which are already threatened by the rapid increase in temperatures in the region. According to the eight-nation report on rapid Arctic warming, polar bears and seals are seeing their habitat quite literally dissolve beneath them.

But for these endangered animals, say some drilling proponents, the arrival of offshore drilling rigs may come as something of a reprieve. "These rigs have a lot of surface area, some of which could even take the place of the melted habitat," says Dr. John Rodgers, founder of Arctic Watch, an organization of scientists who favor Arctic drilling. "Some of these species were out of here. Now with the semi-submersible rigs, they've got a future too."

Deanna Swift can be reached at [email protected] .

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Comments

[jay]

Welfare to Work - for Walruses!

[Animal Lover]

The threat to wildlife is way overstated. A lot of the animals up in the artic are pretty obese. Walruses, seals. Polar bears carry a lot of fat in their bodies. That puts them at risk of heart disease, diabetes, strokes, and a host of other health problems.

Running away from bulldozers and drilling rigs will provide the exercise these animals need. Those walruses, for example, seem to spend all day lying around in the sun. Why can't they be trained to help out with the drilling? Maybe they could use their tusks to dig through the permafrost. Something like that.

Just a thought