Environmentalists and the Oil Companies
During the 1970s, oil development transformed the Prudhoe Bay region of the North Slope Coastal Plain into a large industrial complex, including some 1,500 miles of roads and pipelines, and thousands of acres of industrial faciliaties covering hundreds of square miles. [See map of Prudhoe Bay oil field expansion from 1968-1999 At the center of this complex is the town of Deadhorse. Spread over the tundra, it contains numerous oil rigs, production facilities, a power plant, and housing for 5,000 workers. Attached to this complex, like a giant umbilical cord, is the long thin ribbon of the TransAlaska Pipeline, pointing south. Pumping up to 600,000 barrels of oil a day, it flows through 48-inch diameter pipe on a 789-mile journey across three mountain ranges, beneath 350 rivers and streams, and through several earthquake zones before reaching Valdez on Alaska's southwest coast. It's construction was a technical feat of profound proportions. And so was the cost - $7.7 billion.
However, drawing on government and private studies and reports, environmental organizations have shown that North Slope oil development has brought immense profits to the petroleum industry. It has also destroyed thousands of acres of local wildlife habitat, caused declines in local wildlife populations, and left hundreds of open pits containing millions of gallons of oil industry waste. Tens of thousands of tons of air pollutants were also pumped into the fragile Arctic environment each year along with an equal number of spilled gallons of crude oil, diesel and toxic chemicals. In one important government study, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service compared predictions about the development of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields and TransAlaska pipeline with what actually transpired in terms of environmental effects and impacts on wildlife. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service report concluded that fish and wildlife habitat losses resulting from construction and operation of the pipeline system and Prudhoe Bay oilfields had been greatly underestimated in the original Environmental Impact Statement.
Other environmental organization studies such as Oil in the Arctic: The Environmental Record of of Oil Development on Alaska's North Slope and Tracking Arctic Oil: The Environmental Price of Drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge documented the oil industry's "disturbing record" of non-compliance with state and federal laws and regulations designed to protect the environment.Following the Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound in March 1989, additional research has illustrated how the environmental price of North Slope oil development extends far beyond the Arctic tundra.
Partly in response to these criticisms, oil companies on the North Slope have made substantial efforts to improve their methods of operation in the newer oil fields. They have also underwritten a number of large-scale research studies of their own. For ex ample, one project funded by the Alaska Oil and Gas Association and Alaska Science and Technology Foundation, supported a five year university-based effort to evaluate present and potential future effects of air emissions from oil and gas development in the Prudhoe Bay area. Specific goals included deeping their understanding of the environmental impacts that may result from continued Arctic oil development, identifying threshold levels of disturbance at which these impacts are induced, and establishing the level of control required to mitigate those impacts.
Still, these innovative techniques and research studies promoted by the oil companies to reduce damage to the tundra and enhance restoration have been viewed as only minimally successful by most environmentalists. Illustrating their criticism, they point to efforts such as the 1986 Chevron Company drilling of an exploratory well on Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation lands within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - using new techniques to reduce the impact of the drill pad. Yet four years later, a reconnaissan ce visit by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicated that only six percent of the drill pad had any vegetation on it.
As for the overall restoration of the North Slope habitat following oil extraction, present estimates suggest that the costs will be extremely high. Chevron, for example, calculates a $2.6 million cost to remove facilities, revegate land and monitor its s ingle exploratory drill pad and waste pit in ANWR. As summed up by the Natural Resources Defense Council in a 1991 report: "There are almost 1,500 miles of roads and pipelines as well as thousands of acres of gravel pads on the North Slope. Even if succes sful techniques are developed for restoring these facilities, the economic feasibility of doing so will remain a major issue."
Chevron oil rig near Kaktovik
White House, Congress, and the State of Alaska
The Canadian Dimension: Canada and the United States