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Bush Launches New Offensive for Oil Drilling in the Arctic |
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By Katherine Stapp*
The
White House is treating the issue of oil drilling in a pristine
Alaskan wildlife refuge as fait accompli. But oil companies are
maintaining a cautious attitude about investing in the 607,000-hectare
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
NEW YORK - They hiked around the tundra of
Alaska's coastal plain, shivered through sub-freezing temperatures,
and sat down with the leaders of an Inupiat Eskimo village near
the pristine wilderness refuge that has become ground zero in a
bitter struggle to define U.S. energy policy.
But the group of five Republican senators, two Cabinet members and
a White House official who traveled Mar. 5 to Alaska's North Slope
to observe the oil industry's seasonal operations there did not
visit the Gwich'in community of Arctic Village.
The local residents adamantly oppose opening the refuge for drilling
because they fear it will displace the Porcupine caribou (Rangifer
tarandus) herd that native people have hunted for generations.
"We invited Senator (Pete) Domenici to bring the delegation to the
Gwich'in community, but we never heard back," said Luci Beach, executive
director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee. "It hurt my heart because
I felt they had already made up their minds."
The U.S. House of Representatives has repeatedly passed measures
to allow drilling in the 607,000-hectare Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR), only to see the legislation blocked in the Senate.
Now the congressional majority Republicans are trying a new tactic
to permit exploration: insert revenues from ANWR leases in an upcoming
budget resolution, which requires only a simple majority of 51 votes
to pass and would be immune to a Democratic filibuster.
"The president (George W. Bush) asked for it, and we're trying to
do what the president asked for," Judd Gregg, chairman of the House
Budget Committee, said last week, adding that it was reasonable
to assume ANWR would be part of the budget measure.
Oil drilling in ANWR has been a central part of President Bush's
energy plan, which critics say ignores conservation and renewable
sources to focus almost exclusively on fossil fuels.
The United States holds just three percent of the world's oil reserves,
yet it consumes 25 percent of the world's oil production.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, ANWR has a 95 percent chance
of containing 5.7 billion barrels of oil, and a five percent chance
of containing as much as 16 billion barrels.
But the coastal plain is also home to caribou, musk ox (Ovibos moschatus),
polar bears (Thalarctos maritimus) and other Arctic wildlife.
"The caribou is a gift that has been given to us, one that we don't
take lightly. This is a fragile herd. It is not something you want
to experiment with," Beach told Tierramérica. "No one has the right
to take away another person's subsistence."
Although not in her own village, Beach and other activists did meet
with some members of the delegation for about an hour in the city
of Anchorage before the officials returned to Washington.
''They gave political responses to our concerns, but I don't think
they really care about the human rights of the Gwich'in people,"
said the indigenous activist. "I'm trying to stay hopeful that common
sense and wisdom are going to prevail because this is something
that will effect future generations."
Michael Musante, spokesman for Arctic Power, the leading pro-Arctic
drilling lobbying group and a member of the delegation told Tierramérica
that the Inupiat with whom he met hunt in the same area as the Gwich'in
and they feel that oil exploitation in the refuge is absolutely
necessary for improving their lives.
He also said that the drilling infrastructure would occupy 2.4 to
3.2 hectares of the 607,000 hectares that comprise the ANWR.
But several prominent oil companies, including BP, ConocoPhilips
and ChevronTexaco, have dropped out of Arctic Power, and an anonymous
Bush administration source recently told the New York Times that
the oil companies would not pursue drilling in ANWR even "if the
government gave them the leases for free."
Two years ago, Alaska offered leases in the three-mile-wide strip
of water just offshore of ANWR -- with no takers.
However, Ed Porter, a research manager at the American Petroleum
Institute, says there are sufficient incentives for investing in
the refuge.
"ANWR is still the largest single prospect in North America. I would
be very surprised if most companies didn't participate in the bidding
process. Oil prices are over 50 dollars a barrel, and I somehow
doubt that would dampen interest," he said.
Advances in extraction technology over the last 30 years, such as
horizontal drilling that allows multiple wells to be tapped from
the same primary drill site, would significantly reduce the project's
ecological footprint, Porter added.
Musante recognized that ExxonMobil is the only transnational still
in Arctic Power, but noted that the oil companies cannot take any
decisions until Congress acts, which could be soon.
Russ Roberts, a spokesman for ExxonMobil, conceded in a conversation
with Tierramérica that "critical data, such as seismic, is virtually
non-existent, making a meaningful interpretation and forecast of
resources difficult."
But the company believes that "ANWR can be developed with little
threat to the ecology of the Coastal Plain," partly by using three-dimensional
imaging techniques that allow engineers to pinpoint oil reservoirs
even where the geology is very complex.
Treating the passage of legislation opening ANWR to drilling as
a fait accompli, the Bush administration's 2006 budget assumes 2.4
billion dollars in fees from development of the refuge's oil and
natural gas resources.
But Lydia Weiss, a government relations expert at the environmental
group Defenders of Wildlife, says the numbers just don't add up.
"The lease sales are wildly speculative," she said. "To make 2.4
billion dollars, the leases in the Arctic Refuge would have to sell
for between 4,000 and 6,000 dollars per acre. The fact is that the
average price per leased acre on the North Slope over the past 20
years is 50 dollars per acre."
"We're hoping the chairmen of the (budget) committees will not engage
in trickery on something as controversial as drilling in ANWR, which
a majority of Americans oppose," Weiss said.
But should the measure pass, "the environmental community will fight
every step of the way," she warned.
* Katherine Stapp is the IPS North America/Caribbean
regional editor.
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