Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Shell Wins Offshore Drilling Rights In Alaska
On Monday, October 20th, the Federal Government granted rights to Dutch Shell Company to drill in the Arctic Ocean for oil and natural gas. The Minerals Management Service issued a permit to Shell to drill two exploration wells in areas of the Beaufort Sea between July and October of next year. Though the pronouncement represents a large step forward in the legal process, the energy company cannot immediately begin operations; it still must secure an air permit from Environmental Protection Agency. This pronouncement did not come as a surprise to the opponents of offshore drilling, as it is only the latest development in a long line of lawsuits, court hearings, and controversial decisions.
Shell’s operations faces stiff opposition from environmental groups who claim the government is supporting nothing more than a Bush-era leasing rush. Organizations such as Pacific Environment claim that drilling will pollute the water and release large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council the effects of an oil spill on the sensitive Alaskan ecosystem could be devastating. Indigenous populations also oppose large-scale drilling operations, fearing that such an undertaking could disrupt migration patterns of bowhead whales during the summer depleting their main source of food. In the face of such criticism, Shell has pledged to make changes to how it explores for oil and natural gas in the Arctic. The company has reduced size of its drilling fleet and will completely stop operations and remove drilling ships during the whale-hunting season. Unfortunately, such measures have done little to quell the controversy surrounding Shells drilling operations in the Beaufort Sea.
On this particular issue I have to side with the environmentalists and indigenous peoples of the Alaska. I understand the government’s intentions; there are over 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas waiting to be discovered of the Alaskan coast, and the extraction of these resources would undoubtedly lessen the US’s dependence on foreign oil. However, I believe that the risks of offshore drilling simply outweigh the benefits. Despite Shell’s attempt to minimize its presence in the region, off shore drilling has been known to disrupt indigenous hunting parties and whale migration patterns. Also past disasters, including the infamous Exxon Valdez spill, have shown that oil spills can have detrimental effects on Alaska’s ecosystem, in the short and long run.
This controversial decision to allow the Dutch Shell Company to drill in the Beaufort Sea was born out of the mantra “Drill, baby, drill.” This belief contends that expanding domestic oil production will somehow solve our dependence on foreign energy supplies. This is simply not the case. The United States does not have the reserves capable of satisfying our exponentially growing demand for energy, even for a short period of time. This is why drilling for oil near ecologically and culturally sensitive areas in Alaska is simply unacceptable: it does not represent the solution, only a way to worsen the problem.
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I mean are they really going to improve the way they drill for oil? (Not that there is any real way you can do this, its like saying you stole in a non-violent way, you still are guilty of stealing). I bet this this just a way to assuage the strong opposition in the short run, but the might not follow through because they know the masses wont stop buying oil, even if they don't agree with how it was obtained, they need it. Also, is this in ANWAR? Again, like hunting in the Shennendoah national park, this problem is a symptom of the root issue, we are demanding or expecting to use more oil in the future than we actually need. So I strongly agree with the last sentence of this blog.
ReplyDeleteI have always felt strongly about drilling in ANWAR. To tamper with and disrespect the most un-touched pristine state that the US owns would only expose Americas willingness to throw nature under the bus so we can continue living the overly-consumptive lifestyles that other countries criticize us for. Allowing drilling there would make me feel great disappointment in my government, succumbing to the pressures of oil companies, when really, the reserves Alaska can offer us are only a small slice of the pie when it comes to how much oil we will use in the future.
Your absolutely right. Any effort that the oil industry could make to "go green" would be about as effective as trying to put out a forest fire with a water glass. However, I still think that it is a course of action that we need to pursue. It is obvious to any student of renewable energies that it will be quite some time until clean energy sources like wind or solar can be effective replacements to oil and coal. This I why I believe that, while we persuade the government to fund clean energy research and installment programs, we also need to put pressure on the oil and coal industries to implement technologies like low-impact drilling and even clean coal (gasp!!) in order to reduce their environmental impacts until clean sources of energy can replace them.
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