Drilling in Arctic Refuge Won't Light Up California

By RODGER SCHLICKEISEN

February 6, 2001

Gale A. Norton, the new U.S. Interior secretary, miraculously underwent a conversion to conservation on the road to President Bush's Cabinet. She ran from many of the extremist positions that she has taken during her 20-year career, adopting a just-kidding defense on key issues. She claimed she doesn't actually believe the Endangered Species Act is unconstitutional, for instance, even though she argued the opposite before the U.S. Supreme Court as Colorado's attorney general. And she said she no longer supports a "right to pollute" or questions the scientific validity of global warming.

But on one matter she drew the line: She insisted that Congress must open the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to exploitation by multinational oil companies. During her Senate confirmation hearings, Norton--who began her career litigating on behalf of oil companies and others at James Watt's Mountain States Legal Foundation--promised that oil production there would affect only 2,000 acres and that it would be done "in the most responsible way," perhaps by restricting drilling to the "dead of winter so that the tundra itself would not be affected."

We've heard such assurances before. Three decades ago, Big Oil promised that development would be concentrated around the Prudhoe Bay deposit, just 60 miles west of the Arctic refuge. Now, that development is as big as the state of Rhode Island. It stretches across an 800-square-mile region, nearly 100 miles from east to west. And it belches more air pollution than Washington, D.C. Pollution regularly blows from the oil fields into the city of Barrow 200 miles away. The Prudhoe Bay complex is so big, in fact, that astronauts aboard the space shuttle have reported seeing it as clearly as New York City.

If Congress allows drilling in the Arctic refuge, the ugly tentacles of oil extraction would stretch even farther. That's because at Prudhoe Bay, the oil is pooled in one reservoir. But in the refuge, it's believed to be scattered across the coastal plain in smaller accumulations. Wells would be connected by an infrastructure of roads, pipelines, power plants, processing facilities, loading docks, dormitories, airstrips, gravel pits, utility lines and landfills.

Norton claims that oil companies would be allowed to drill only in the winter, building ice roads that would magically disappear with the spring thaw. But her department's own scientists disagree. On the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Web site, these scientists point out that in winter, there's only enough water in the arctic refuge for about 10 miles of ice roads, "[t]herefore, full development may likely require a network of permanent gravel pads and roads." Seismic exploration is now conducted in the winter. But even seismic exploration, typically a large operation with many people and vehicles driving across the tundra in a grid pattern, damages sensitive vegetation and soils, the agency says.

And consider Big Oil's history of environmental destruction. On average, there's more than a spill a day of crude oil, refined oil products or hazardous substances at Prudhoe Bay.

Ninety-five percent of Alaska's North Slope already is open to oil exploration. But the oil companies want to invade a small, 110-mile strip of coastline in the wildest place left in America, forever altering habitat so rich in wildlife diversity that it's proudly called "America's Serengeti."

And for what? Proponents of drilling claim falsely that there's enough oil in the refuge to lower prices at the pump and to help make us energy independent. But the amount of oil that environmental experts say is most likely to be found would satisfy only about six months of our national demand, and it would probably take 10 years or more for any of that oil to make it to market. U.S. oil production cannot hope to influence prices. We have only 3% of the world's known reserves.

Desperate to justify more drilling in the Arctic, the president is trying to use California's electricity shortage to sell his plan. But, of course, more oil won't help California. Oil accounts for less than 1% of the state's power generation. California could use more natural gas. But there are numerous better sources than the Arctic for that.

Even if oil from the Arctic refuge could help California in 10 years, there's no guarantee that the oil companies would send it there. Experts have concluded that since 1996, BP Amoco exported Alaskan crude to Asia for less than it could have sold it to U.S. refiners. Why? To tighten supplies, jack up West Coast oil prices and fatten BP's bottom line, they allege.

On the issue of the Arctic refuge, I hope Bush will listen to his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, instead of Norton. Jeb Bush has asked the Interior Department not to open nearly 6 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling. He said Florida wants to protect "sensitive natural resources" and to maintain a clean environment.

Maybe the president should have given the job at Interior to his brother.