Should we really consider drilling in the Arctic? What are our other options?

Question

Seems everyone has an opinion. Personally, I'm against it, but I'd love to hear some good arguments for and against.

Answer 1

There ARE environmental issues. Wildlife, harsh environment, risks of leakage all add into the equation.

As worldwide oil reserves diminish (and our "thirst" for crude increases), plus as $/barrel goes up, the concern is will we bypass the environmental "price" that's paid should we drill there?

I'm concerned that the average American is probably unlikely willing to do ANYTHING to reduce their consumption of oil. People are still buying SUVs that gargle gasoline, and many have no practical use of them (do people really need to drive an SUV to have their nails done?). Others wouldn't carpool if you paid them to.

If we were at war, like WW-II (1941-1945) and gasoline was rationed, you'd see a heck of alot of Americans mad as the devil; we're spoiled and not the tough breed we were sixty years ago.

If foreign oil was cut off completely, we'd be drilling in the Arctic like maniacs, and wouldn't give the environmental impacts of Arctic drilling a second's worth of thought. Even more ugly, there'd be an awful lot of folks who would rather have our younger Americans go off and die in some foreign war rather than curtail some of their selfish need to consume oil; THAT I find most vulgar.

Answer 2

The arctic is a big place. Do you mean just ANWR? Do you include the Barents Sea, which is currently being explored and developed by Norway and Russia? Do you include the McKenzie Delta (Canada), which is also being drilled in advance of the long awaited pipeline? There is a lot of interest in Arctic drilling outside of Alaska.

As someone who has been involved in the oil and gas business for years (on the periphery), I would say yes, we should consider drilling the Arctic. The exploration and production process has come a long way and leaves much less of an environmental footprint than it used to. The big accidents you've seen in the past decade or so have been with transportation (ships and pipelines), not at the wellbore.

Our alternatives? Use less oil and gas and buy more from sources which are increasingly expensive and hostile.

Answer 3

It will become too expensive very soon for most of the world to afford, even if there are some sort of oil reserves left; the easily accessible, easy to refine stuff has been used; and demand keeps rising.

Once oil is used it is gone. shouldn't we save it for uses that cannot easily be sourced otherwise.

Cheap energy has become like an addiction, most will deny there is a problem, it doesn't affect them, they can handle it.

The only real long term option is to withdraw from the drug of unsustainable lifestye and unlimited industrial growth; but given no-one in power will admit to the problem and most people are to scared to think about the concequences of no cheap oil - nothing is going to change and the oil industry and governments will keep promising all will be wel (at least until they retire in a few years)

Drilling in the artic only puts off the inevitable. If human civilisation uses the extra time to put in place life sustaining cultures, then OK drill for now. But I fear nothing will happen until we have burnt all our options and have no ready energy supplies left to cussion the change.

Answer 4

Yes we should.

Many biologists (myself included) are conservationists. We believe in the wise use of all of our natural resources. Drilling in ANWAR could be done with extremely minimal impact. To achieve this minimal impact oil companies will have to agree to independent review by biologists to insure that they are extracting and transporting the oil in a fashion that is within the guidelines set by biologists.

Today this may not be cost efficient for oil companies to agree to methods of drilling and transport which impact the environment less. With the going price of crude oil and a gallon of gas rising, it may be possible in the future.

Preservation is a fallacy. We have already altered the environment just by existing and environments constantly change. Grasslands grow to mixed shrub-lands, then on to early forest and finally on to old growth. Fire, erosion and other factors cause any of these sucessional stages to halt or reverse.

It is up to us as stewards of the land to realize that 1) We are a part of a *constantly changing* environment and 2) All parties can utilize lands in ways that they personally benefit as long as they observe practices that minimize their impact on the environment and respect the uses that others wish to practice upon the same lands.

People that want to "preserve" natural areas do not understand that preservation in the current state is impossible. For example by implementing "no burn" or "no forest fire" policies we mismanage forests on a daily basis by the prevention of the fires which are necessary and vital to the ecology, species richness and diversity of the forest. We also force them into lifeless old growth forests with no edge effect - where the vast majority of woodland animals live.

Answer 5

There are other options to drilling for more oil, and some movements are taking a hold in various parts of the world. For instances, in Brazil, their automotive industry is shifting towards using flex fuel. Flex fuel involves using a mixture of ethanol with gasoline; subsequently, the ratio of ethanol:gasoline varies, depending on the prices of gasoline and ethanol. In the U.S., biofuels and biodiesel is becoming more prominent as prices for gasoline increases. Biofuels and biodiesel is dependant on crops, such as sugarcane in Brazil, corn/switchgrass in the U.S., rapeseed in Europe. This is just one alternative choice to using oil.

Answer 6

There is a serious problem fundementally here. If we use more of something we can produce we will soon run out of it. Any solution to the oil crisis that doesn't involve solving the problem of either producing oil or finding a renewable fuel source would be shortsighted.

Answer 7

There isn't enough oil up there to make it worth it, and the whole exercise would just be putting off the inevitable. The only good solution to our energy needs is to use energy sources that are not fossil fuels.

Answer 8

There is enough oil in the grounds of the earth to last hundreds of more years, the problem we have right now is that the U.S. president bush is tied very much to the oil industry and so is his partner dick cheny. And neither one of them cares about the everyday U.S. citizen and all they can think of is $$$$$$$.