| The 2,000-acre ruse
Editorial in the Boulder Daily Camera
August 27, 2001
When dealing with big oil, one expects the rhetoric to be slick. But it's not
just unctuous. It's fallacious.
Early this month, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to open the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. The vote was called a compromise,
because oil and gas exploration would be confined to a mere 2,000 acres. The
Coastal Plain of the wildlife refuge is 1.5 million acres. In that context,
sacrificing 2,000 acres sounds like a trifle.
But that's exactly what the oil companies wanted. And it's no trifle. The
2,000-acre restriction is neither a compromise nor an accurate picture of
drilling in ANWR. It is, however, indicative of the equivocation about this
issue.
President Bush says the nation is plunging into an energy crisis. Energy
consumption is expected to outpace domestic energy production. Such an
imbalance, he says, requires that the nation increase its production of oil and
other resources. Central to that strategy is drilling for oil in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge.
The so-called 1002 area of the refuge might contain between 3.6 billion and
10.4 billion barrels of oil. The United States burns about 7 billion barrels
annually.
President Eisenhower established ANWR in 1960, and President Carter doubled its
size in 1980. The coastal 1002 area, east of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, is off
limits to oil and gas exploration. It is the last 5 percent of the Alaskan
coastal plain that is still closed to oil and gas development.
That might change. The House has voted to drill, but the Senate could reject
the 2,000-acre ruse.
The bill that passed the House (and the one pending in the Senate) would
require that the government lease no fewer than 200,000 acres of the refuge for
oil exploration. That 2,000-acre restriction applies only to drilling rigs, and
only to that portion of the equipment that touches the ground.
The 2,000 acres would not have to be - and would not be - contiguous. A modern
drilling rig covers 10 acres. Do the math. It's not fuzzy.
This is no compromise. It's exactly what President Bush and the oil barons
wanted.
Furthermore, that 2,000-acre restriction says nothing about the rest of the
infrastructure used to pump oil out of the ground, across the tundra, and down
to the lower 48. The House voted to allow the construction of 200 miles of
roads and 200 miles of pipeline in the refuge.
Developing oil requires more than drilling rigs, roads and pipelines. There
must also be barracks, power stations, maintenance sheds, storage facilities,
sewage-treatment and water-extraction facilities. Ice roads, used in winter to
move heavy equipment over tundra, consume about 1 million gallons per mile.
This water is sucked from critical fish habitat. The U.S. Department of
Interior estimates that 2,000 acres of drill rigs would spawn a maze of
facilities spanning between 130,000 acres to 303,000 acres.
And how necessary is this oil? Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine this month,
energy experts Amory and Hunter Lovins note that the coastal plain could yield
an average of 292,000 barrels per day over 30 years. That would power only 2
percent of American cars and light trucks.
But that much oil could be saved if light vehicles became 0.4 miles per gallon
more efficient. Today, American cars average 24 mpg, a 20-year low. Congressman
Mark Udall, who represents Boulder, notes that raising the average to 40 mpg by
2010 would save 10 times as much oil as would likely be extracted from ANWR.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the last genuinely wild places on
Earth. The oil companies have shown no reason to despoil it. Their distortions
only underscore the need to preserve it.
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