2,000-acre hoax
Published Thursday, October 9, 2008
Digg
delicious
Facebook
Mixx
Reddit
Stumble It!Oct. 5, 2008
To the editor:
A tall tale from Big Oil has been floating around the media recently. Its mission is to make destroying pristine wilderness sound reasonable. They tell us: “We’re only going to drill in 2,000 acres of the Arctic refuge — we swear!”
But Big Oil’s “2,000 acres” will sprawl across the entire Arctic refuge just like 1,800 acres of Turnpike slices all across New Jersey. A network of drill sites, pipelines, roads, airstrips and other infrastructure will effectively destroy one of the most important wildlife sites in North America.
And all for what? A 4 cent drop per gallon of gas that we won’t even see for nearly 20 years.
Former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., said it best in 2003: “It is only a few thousand acres, they say. That is like saying, do not worry, the tumor is only in your lungs. The drilling will have impacts that will affect wildlife throughout the area.”
If we buy the myth, we’ll end up getting short-changed.
Carl Demonbrun
North Pole
Community Discussion
Newsminer.com doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full user's agreement.
Carl knows nothing. How convenient to add another ten years to the liberals current estimate of oil production in ANWR.
America can do anything. We raced to the moon in less than ten years after JFK announced we would. We hadn't even been to space yet.
Carl would rather us continue to pour billions into terrorist nations for their precious oil.
If that's what you want, Carl, ... then squeal and whine a little more, maybe you'll get your way.
As Americans, we must explore our resources in a responsible way and not cower to the hippie environmentalists and tree-hugging sentiments of the left.
Perhaps have the environmentalists set the standards to meet for development? Then it might get the okay and actually happen.
Drilling in the Arctic Refuge "will effectively destroy one of the most important wildlife sites in Northern America." So, when was the last time you went up to see and enjoy this most important wildlife site in Northern America? Never could understand why Alaska has all its land tied up in preserves, reserves, deserves etc. If you can't get to it who is going to see it but a limited few.
PRISTINE...1. uncorrupted or unsullied. 2. of the earliest period or state.
WILDERNESS...a wild, uncultivated, uninhabited region.
REFUGE...1. shelter from danger or trouble. 2. a place of shelter or safety. (I got these definitions from one of them Webster books.)
Now if there really is all this global warming going on then our Arctic Refuge is no longer a place of shelter or safety for anything..by Webster standards that is. So our Arctic Refuge ain't pristine anymore 'cause your driving to work and my wood stove corrupted and sullied the micro organisms and bigger stuff (birds, rabbits, etc.) in the refuge with corrupted and sullied air.
So bust out 2,000 acres plus infastructure for getting oil cause you and me ain't going to quit driving to work. And unless we get a job on those 2,000 acres plus infastructure we ain't never going to see the former pristine Arctic Refuge wilderness anyway!
Ahhhh. Sometimes I like using that global warming syndrome thing to make no point at all.
Suckers. All you pro-drilling advocates miss the big picture.
Exxon had 100 million barrels at Pt. Thompson (right next to the refuge). Sarah Palin and Tom Irwin revoked its leases because Exxon sat on them for three decades in violation of their lease obligations.
In all of this desperation to open the Arctic Refuge, the pundits have missed that Big Oil sits on vast reserves in Alaska because Big Oil has figured out that limiting supply can ensure high profits- and screwed American consumers.
The value of the oil in Pt. Thomson is about three times greater than the corpus of the Permanent Fund. Had Pt. Thompson been developed under a competitive bid production sharing agreement- your dividend checks could now be close to ten thousands dollars, per person.
Great word...Corpus....had to look that one up. Thanks!!
CEO - 100M bbls is too small to develop as a stand-alone field. Additional resources within the sphere of operation need to be located before the identified resources at Pt. Thompson can be economically developed. I am, however, in favor of the action taken by Gov. Palin and Commish. Irwin.
I'd like to see your formula for deriving $10,000 PFD checks with the additional input of 100Mbbls. Please post here:
Mr. Demonbrun's statement that it would take 20 years for oil to start flowing from ANWR is wholly, ridiculous. Even if true, why should this stop us? We should have started working on this twenty years ago. I will agree that additional capacity will not lower the price of fuel very much... this is more a function of the relative value of currency, however, without question we must have the oil and increasing availability of fuel will keep prices much lower than constricting or resctricting energy.
It never ceases to amaze me that people move here and do not want to adhere to the Constitution. They want to change Alaska to resemble where they came from...only nicer! Our Constitution says we will develop our natural resources. Period. And, as already clarified on here, his assertion that it will take 20 yrs to see oil is just false.
Prospector- 30 years is a long time, what would it have cost for exxon to have built that stand alone oil field back in 1978? do not give me numbers from today because it just doesnt work that way, it would have cost less when they got the lease and they had an obligation under their contract to develope and they didnt. So go argue imaginary numbers on what could have been and should have been but just like Socrates I will take performance over potential every time.
The oil company people have pulled the wool over the eyes of the sheeple. The greed is so rampant that the short sighted corrupt politicians will jump on the bandwagon to drill drill drill, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. And many will follow, bleating out the mantra because it's just a wilderness, nothing there except caribou and indians. Who cares about them anyway.
They're Eskimos, and my understanding is they have long supported drilling there.
Take a trip to this "wilderness" and let me know what you see. If you are lucky you might see an arctic fox and some scraggly tundra. Comparing ANWR to Denali Park would be like comparing a rain forest to a dessert. The only reason it was put into a protected status was so that the feds could have an oil savings account for later.
Yes, ANWR is sooo beautiful and pristine, and we all spend soo much time up there enjoying it. What a ridiculous argument.
They are not all Eskimo. The village of Kaktovik (pop ~250), a small village and home to all members of the Kaktovik native corporation are Inupiat Eskimo. Life in Kaktovik subsists on caribou, whale, and fish. They have benefited greatly from regional development and a majority of them yes, do support continued development.
The villages of Arctic Village, Fort Yukon, Venetie, Birch Creek, Chalkyitsik, and Beaver here in Alaska, as well as Old Crow (YT) and Inuvik, Aklavik, Telit Zheh, and Tsiigehtchic (NWT) comprise a much larger (~10,000 people) and broader population of Gwich'in Athabascan people. Summer-time river fishing is a staple, but most importantly is their reliance on the Porcupine caribou herd which calves on the ANWR coastal plain. While they are opposed to drilling there, they have been active in promoting oil and gas development in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge.
It is not fair to use Don Young's vacuous argument that ANWR is like a blank piece of paper and should be exploited just because you personally haven't been there.
Faribanksgas, can I have my dessert while in a rain forest, please?
We need to stop useing the word "OR" and use the word "AND".And lower consumption,and nuclear,and solar ,and Hydro,and gas,and wind,and drill,and,and,and.
ANWR has become a trading point in the political arena. It will continue to be a political pawn. The bigger question is how much development in Alaska will continue as the price of oil drops. The break even points around the world are much less than Alaska. When money is tight, where will you invest what you have? Where is the largest profit to be made.
brassmonkey-
Arctic Village, Venetie, Fort Yukon, etc. are nowhere near ANWR. The people who live there are Eskimos and they support drilling.
It is disingenuous to suggest that there are also Indians there.
But I know the argument. The Porcupine herd changes patterns through years. I believe, and I think science supports this, the herd will adapt. In fact, I can't remember, but it seems I read some time back that it doesn't exclusively calve there, and has already been changing there.
I wonder how the Athabascans would feel if a bunch of people from, say, Fairbanks or DC or Florida, argued that they should have as much or more say in what goes on in the Gwich'in's back yard?
Funny you should mention that, Corrine, since the folks in DC have wanted to and continue to want to dictate how Alaska native tribes in general use their lands. This was supposedly settled with ANCSA, but that is not wholly accurate.
Following WWII people were sensitive to issues such as cultural genocide and the UN Charter set out terms for decolonization of "non-self-governing territories." Many disenfranchised groups in Africa and Europe embarked on this process, and the US government volunteered Alaska to the list of such territories, tacitly acknowledging it held no legitimate control over native lands or lives. Shortly afterward, the US ushered Alaska into statehood, thereby securing access to gold, oil, timber and fish, and in effect violating their agreement pursuant to the UN Charter.
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA of 1971 was attempt to capitulate with corporate pressures that wanted access to Alaskan resources without fear of lawsuits from the tribes who held legitimate claims to those lands and resources. Compared to the Dawes Act of 1887 in which American Indians surrendered ~90 million acres of land, ANCSA was a steal, garnering ~320 million acres of land from the native peoples. ANCSA provided a corridor for the pipeline and subsequent profits by the feds, the state of AK and the oil industry exceed $100B. In exchange, the 13 native regional native corporations were established and provided lands not taken and a one-time payment of ~1/20 the annual profits made from Alaskan resources in one year. Remember this was 1971, so a single years profits were far less than they are today.
Now, the pro-development cabal are demanding access to an additional 2,000 acres, which as pointed out by Mr Demonbrun will not be a neat plot but will stretch haphazardly in order to provide the greatest corporate profit.
Regardless of where Gwich'in villages are, the fact remains that they rely on the Porcupine caribou herd. Many Fairbanks hunters consider the Tanana flats their backyard and hunt there yearly. A similar analogy can be drawn for the Gwich'in and the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd.
so what. Get us off of foreign oil dependency!
JB -- would you please re-state your argument? It makes no sense as currently drafted. If you want to use "today's numbers", how about this analogy: It will take a five year old child, today, twenty years to earn a PhD; therefore, by the Not-Here-No-Way-NotInMyBackyard logic, what's the point of going to school?
(This comment was removed by the Newsminer.com staff. Please see our User Agreement for further information.)
I was thinking $10 a gallon gasoline might get it drilled.
Then Fairbanks could return to its Pristine state, because only a few ultra rich could afford to heat there homes here.
We have one way out of the upcoming worldwide recession . Put some Americans, (Hopefully Alaskans) to work,
Drill , dig , mine
Doc
Allan_Riston -- care to explain? By someone drilling and mining for you, you live and live well.
Carl, you obviously have not been to the coastal plain of ANWR. If you call it pristine than I guess you would consider the Moon and Mars pristine. Twenty years for development? Obviously you have no idea how long it took to build the TAP and obviously you don't know how far ANWR is from Prudhoe Bay. Where are you from - Orlando?
CPW
If it weren't for the miners, you wouldn't have the metals that make this site or you're posts possible.
And to make it clearer, yeh, your life would suck.
Drill, dig, mine... but then what?
What Allan Riston is asking is what are you going to do when you can no longer drill, dig, or mine your problems away? What happens when there isn't an oil resevre like ANWR left? What happens when our only possible choice for liquid hydrocarbons is foreign oil?
More broadly, I think the best thing to do would be to require any investment made in drilling in ANWR to be matched by investing in alternative energy sources.
Or, here's a thought. Let's hang onto ANWR for a while yet. Let's keep that oil in the ground until the price of oil is not measured in $100s per barrel, but in $1000s per barrel. Let's sell that oil for a REAL profit, because, once it's gone, it's REALLY gone!
Brassmokey posted: "A similar analogy can be drawn for the Gwich'in and the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd."
Don't mean to show my ignorance but I really thought that the Gwich'in were not Eskimo and the Porcupine heard is in the very eastern part of AK, like the Taylor Highway. I think Kaktovic is in ANWR and it's the Central caribou heard around that neck of the tundra and Kaktovic is an Eskimo Village. And the Central head has increased about 10 fold since the TAP started. Since it's been a few years since I've been hunting in that area maybe I wrong - but I don't think so!
CPW
Carl has a point, I disagree with it completely, but he has a point.
Carl does sound like a person who has never been to the north slope, much less to the ANWR which starts on the southern slope of the brooks range and goes north for over 19 million acres. 2000 acres is equivelent to 1/9500 of the land in ANWR. The particular area planned for drilling is on the barren arctic ocean tundra which according to climate models will soon be underwater and we won't have to worry about getting land permits because it will once again be claimed by the sea.
If the oil was under the statue of liberty, I would still advocate drilling. If we don't drill our own oil then what right do we have to ask the UAE to keep prices low?
Henry -- when the price of oil hits $1,000/bbl, your offspring will be serving and speaking Chinese. Let's hope it never gets there. I say, drill and pump all that oil out as soon as possible, thereby enabling and paying for the tremendously huge cost associated with research, development, and construction of the next age energy infrastructure. The sooner all that oil is depleted, the sooner we'll transfer energy demand to its alternatives and the sooner the North Slope can return to a barren wasteland with a few wandering bands of starving people. You know, like the "good" old days.
Oh, and you can bet that the smart oil producers are investing big time into alternative energy development. BP is the largest producer of photovaltaic cells and Dutch-Shell is the largest investor in wind energy. These guys aren't stupid.
Then there is Allan.... poor Allan. You never learned where things come from. How sad for you. Here's a simple equation for you:
Giant hole in the ground + giant smelter/refiner + giant manufacturer = your little computer and cellphone.
Prospector: There is no reason to believe that Alaskans will be unable to get at the oil in ANWR in 50 years. I would guess that by then oil will be much closer to $1,000/bbl. In any case, regardless of the actual cost of a barrel, the less oil there is everywhere else, the more our own oil is worth.
ALso, BP is far from the largest producer of photovoltaic cells. That would be Sharp. Followed closely by GE.
ALlan's comment, though, is relevant and you simply ignored it. What will our society do when drilling, digging, or mining is NO LONGER AN OPTION?!?!?!
We can always go back to whale oil since it's a renewable source, slow, but renewable.
Carl why don't you go up and put up a tent and live there!
Since Alaska has nearly 24-hours of sunlight at certain times, why aren't we making solar electricity out the wazoo, especially in summer? Seems to me that Alaska could be a major exporter of solar electricity. Sure, we may not have the technology invented yet to store and transport solar power, but if Americans can put a dude on the moon, it seems like we could figure out something as simple as an effective solar storage and transportation system. Also, why don't we have wind generators across our windy areas? In the Midwest, there are miles and miles of windmills that power entire communities. On Parks Highway just south of Denali the state runs its stoplights on tiny little wind generators. If Alaska had invested that $1200 each of us got this fall into renewable energy infrastructure, just think how far we could have moved into our future. Waiting for the oil corporations to create alternative energy systems is waiting for them to figure out additional ways to exploit us. Remember back in the 1970s, during the last oil crisis, when ordinary people like you and me were putting up solar panels and wind generators? We built our own solar systems back then--a little copper tubing, a sheet of glass, a piece of plywood, some black spray paint, caulk, and a recycled water heater or food-grade barrel and voila! Gravity fed hot water! Geo-thermal, liquified coal, biodiesel--those are just corporate ideas that will exploit consumers. I think it's time that we invest our own smarts into our own resources. Let ANWR fulfill its destiny of being a wildlife refuge.
Corinne, the Native communities that were decimated by the previous oil boom are desperate for cash, and are generally in favor of opening ANWR. Those communities that continue to rely on caribou are against it. And no, science does NOT support your claim that the Porcupine herd will adapt. Oil company junk "science" makes that claim, but legitimate scientists are convinced that drilling in the calving grounds will be the end of the last great caribou herd on our planet. Destruction of the Porcupine herd will also exterminate many Native communities in northern Alaska and Canada whose lives center on caribou and the hunt.
no one is going to agree here about to drill or not drill, but just one thing: this question of "when was the last time you were up there?" (as if this makes a difference to whether or not the place is worth preserving) bewilders me. I personally have been up several times, and I live in New Jersey. It's on your doorstep, and you all don't go. It astounds me. If/when I ever do finally live there (I know, I know, how many of us talk about it but never make the big move, right?), I intend to take advantage of going there -- and to every other amazing place the state has to offer. So what's stopping you? Go on up. Quick, before Exxon gets their hands on it.
oh, btw, corinne, you are incorrect. Venetie, FY AV are Indians, not "Eskimos" as you call them. And Arctic VIllage is right on the border of the Refuge, ie across the Chandalar River. But no, not IN it.
oh, and corinne -- they (the Gwich'in Indians of the villages I just mentioned) DO NOT SUPPORT DRILLING!!!
Pinhead...
What? Read again, please.
Look, I don't have time to comment as fully as I wish to today. I want to respond to brassmonkey, who at least made sense, and a proper response to him/her will take too much time.
Maybe tonight, if I get the time and feel like it.
As for the above, that's just dumb.
Its time to get those liberals out of Washington DC, and Juneau so something can be done to save this country.
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.