Oil Drilling in the Arctic

The Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge is one of America's last great wilderness areas. It is home to many animals such as polar bears, wolves, and grizzly bears, caribou herds, snow geese, musk oxen, and dozens of other species. If your oil companies keep drilling in the Arctic, most of these beautiful creatures will die, and some will become extinct.

The Coastal Plain is home to these animals. Annually, a herd of 129,000 caribou gather on the Coastal Plain to bear and nurse their young. Polar bears rely on the Coastal Plain as their most important on-land denning habitat. Musk oxen, grizzly bears, wolves, wolverines, foxes, golden eagles, and snowy owls gather here to hunt and den. In the fall, the Coastal Plain supports up to 300,000 snow geese which detour to feed from their nesting grounds in Canada. Millions of other birds use the Arctic Refuge to nest and as a critical staging area before they begin migration.

Imagine someone coming into your home and ruining everything you have and possibly killing you. This is what you are doing every time you drill in the Arctic. Oil spills average one spill per day. If your oil industry becomes more developed on the Coastal Plain, hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines leading to dozens of oil fields will block wildlife movements and disturb many species. Toxic wastes may leak from pipelines onto the tundra, contaminating wetlands. Rivers and stream beds, the main habitat for fish and wildlife, will be stripped of millions of tons of gravel to be used to construct roads, airstrips, and drill pads. How are these precious animals supposed to survive under these conditions? Where are they supposed to go?

For an example of what your heavy machinery would do to the refuge, just look sixty miles west to Prudhoe Bay, one of the largest oil fields in North America. This giant oil complex has turned one thousand square miles of tundra into an industrial zone containing miles of roads and pipelines, over one thousand wells, and three jetports. The result of this is a landscape defaced by mountains of sewage sludge, scrap metal, garbage and more than sixty contaminated waste sites that contain, and often leak; acids, lead, pesticides, solvents and diesel fuel. All of those wastes would run off into the rivers of the Coastal Plain and contaminate everything, and all the animals would die.

What are these Animals dying for? After a study by the United States Geological Survey scientists, they estimate that there is enough oil under the Arctic Refuge to supply America’s needs for only six months. Is that worth killing all these animals for only six months worth of oil? And other oil companies, just like you even admit that the oil would not be available for at least ten years. The oil under the Arctic Refuge will not lower gasoline, home heating oil, or electricity prices for consumers or reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil. We have a moral responsibility to save wild places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for future generations, not ruin it entirely for only six months worth of oil that won’t change anything at all.

The presence of oil has significant social and environmental impacts, from accidents and routine activities such as seismic exploration, drilling, and generation of polluting wastes. Oil extraction is costly and sometimes environmentally damaging. Offshore exploration and extraction of oil disturbs the surrounding marine environment. Extraction may involve dredging, which stirs up the seabed, killing the sea plants that marine creatures need to survive.