home

“All this activity has environmental groups up in arms. ** Oil ** companies insist that they can take on the ** Arctic ** safely, yet there is no proven way to deal with a spill. The biggest threat is not from the wells -- which will be few and tightly controlled -- but from ** oil ** tankers. Pack ice, storms and icebergs mean that shipping accidents are almost inevitable, and spilt ** oil ** takes decades to break down in the cold ** Arctic ** waters. Nothing much can be done to cope with a spill in the winter beyond tracking the ice, waiting for the ** oil ** to surface in the summer melt, then setting it alight. Yet calls for an ** Arctic **-wide moratorium on ** oil ** exploration until safety measures are in place have gone unheeded. Over the last three years, big ** oil ** companies have teamed up with Norway's independent research organisation SINTEF, based in Trondheim, to test ways of fighting spills, such as mechanical skimmers, dispersants and performing controlled burns on deliberately spilled ** oil **. Results show they are still far from knowing how to cope.” Alan Underson Robert Thompson, who lives in Kaktovik, a small Inupiat community on the coast of the Arctic's Beaufort Sea -- where Shell got provisional approval to drill -- believes that Shell's drilling plans must have been approved by people who don't know the Arctic. Even in the summer months, conditions can be so foreboding that it wouldn't be possible to mount an oil-spill response effort. A recent report for the Canadian government reinforces this point. In the Canadian Beaufort Sea, conditions (precluding sea ice) in June -- the tamest month on the Arctic calendar -- would keep spill response efforts from being launched 20 percent of the time. September and October? Forget about it. Despite this, Shell plans call for drilling beginning in July and continuing through Oct. 31. Despite warnings that global warming is accelerating the melting of the Arctic, sea ice is still found in the Arctic Ocean every month of the year. Arctic seas are far from placid. Even in the summer months, hurricane-like storms form 20-foot waves and create conditions that are so harsh that human beings often cannot step outside. Then there's the Arctic's remoteness. The nearest deepwater port and Coast Guard station is 1,000 miles away. That's roughly the distance between Washington, DC and New Orleans. Coast Guard Admiral Robert Papp recently told Congress "we have nothing" when it comes to the resources and capability to respond to an oil spill in the Arctic. Importantly, no one has been able to come up with a workable way to clean up oil in ice. Shell's spill plan includes techniques that are familiar to anyone who followed the Deepwater Horizon disaster -- in situ burning, dispersants, booms -- methods that were difficult to implement in the Gulf's calm, temperate seas, close to modern infrastructure. When oil companies tested some of these approaches in the Arctic (over 10 years ago), the experiment was declared a "failure." Since then, nothing has changed in Arctic oil-spill response technology. US says not enough known about the Arctic What's more, America's own science experts -- the United States Geological Survey -- say it's "difficult, if not impossible" to make informed decisions about drilling in the Arctic because too much remains unknown about the Arctic's marine environment and the wildlife that depend on it. This week, in Point Hope, Alaska, on the Chukchi Sea where Shell also hopes to drill, Inupiat people from all over Alaska's Arctic coast are coming together for one simple reason -- to pass on the ways of the past to the future. Community elders are sitting down with young people to teach them the traditions that have enabled them to survive in the harsh climate for thousands of years. Point Hope itself, a small spit of land jutting into Earth's northernmost ocean, is the oldest continually inhabited community in North America -- people have lived and thrived there since long before the planet was divvied up by nation states. But the air there is not filled with defeat. As Inupiat leader Rosemary Ahtuangaruak said: "I will continue to speak out for my people with the hope that future generations will continue to be Inupiat -- and not just residents in an industrialized area destroyed by drilling." The Obama administration should not rush forward with drilling in the Arctic Ocean until Shell can provide a proven plan to clean up an oil spill, and until there is more scientific information about the impacts drilling could have in this pristine, unique place. 13189592121318959212 By Emilie Surrusco **//__ Opposition Assertions for Arctic Drilling Debate __//**
 * The US should __not__ increase drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic.**
 * Already used up half of the worlds oil, and if we continue to drill oil at this rate, theories show that almost all of the oil will be gone by 2050
 * Oil is a finite resource and it will 100s of millions of years to produce as much oil as we had before we started drilling in the late 1800’s.
 * Cost of the alternative energy=the true cost of energy
 * Cost is too high; our economy is based too much on this resource.
 * Once it’s gone, our economy will be destroyed
 * The more you pump, the less pressure, and the less pressure, the more money it will cost to extract the oil from the earth.
 * Oil causes serious environmental impacts such as oil spills.
 * In the Arctic, standard oil spill cleaning methods are not effective in the remote climate.
 * We need to start limiting our oil use, and not keep drilling, and keep using the same amount, if not more.
 * Killing and wiping out all the animals and their habitats
 * Can create big war for oil
 * Counter productive by drilling widely
 * People are already drilling
 * Spending money for utilities
 * Chain reaction from global warming
 * GLOBAL WARMING
 * Don’t need oil to have a successful country/government
 * Could be a resource conflict
 * Peak oil Polar bear habitats
 * We need to change to different fuels
 * Issue w/ car exhaust, so get away from fossil fuels!
 * Peak oil already been reached. Save the remaining oil for future generations
 * Need to start focusing on alternative resources instead of gasoline powered items.

How do you stop an ** oil ** spill that is the result of offshore ** drilling ** gone awry? As it turns out, you drill some more.When the linkup is made, BP will be able to pour mud and then concrete into the original well, finally cutting off the flow of ** oil ** for good. The ** drilling ** begins vertically, pushing down some 10,000 ft. below the surface of the Gulf. That's the easy part. Then the drill's path has to curve into the original well. As of July 20, the main relief well was less than 5 ft. from its target: the original well's 7-in.-diameter steel casing, more than 3 miles below the surface of the water. "We're absolutely perfectly positioned," said BP senior vice president Kent Wells, who is leading the effort. Of course, little in the spill response has gone as planned, though so far BP's latest containment cap seems able to stanch the flow of ** oil ** without damaging the sensitive wellbore. But even if the cap remains sealed, the only way to ensure that the well never bleeds again is to finish the relief ** drilling **, which could be done by the end of the month. "The relief well," said retired Coast Guard admiral Thad W. Allen, in a July 16 briefing, "is the final solution." It's about time. The biggest threat is not from the wells -- which will be few and tightly controlled -- but from **oil** tankers. Pack ice, storms and icebergs mean that shipping accidents are almost inevitable, and spilt **oil** takes decades to break down in the cold **Arctic** waters.
 * Oil ** companies insist that they can take on the **Arctic** safely, yet there is no proven way to deal with a spill.

[|The Spill Fleet] The Q4000 platform is part of BP's ** oil **-spill-containment system. It can collect and burn off about 8,000 bbl. a day from the well The Discoverer Enterprise was the first ship to collect ** oil ** from a cap placed over the well. It can process 10,000 to 15,000 bbl. a day These ships run the ROVs (remote operated vehicles), the underwater robots that have carried out most of the procedures on the wellhead Another ROV vessel, this ship helps transmit and record underwater images of the well. It also releases chemical dispersants underwater The Helix Producer is the next containment ship and can capture 20,000 to 25,000 bbl. a day, but it is on hold while the well remains capped

The actic holds thirteen percent of the world's remaining oil. We should stop drilling before it's all gone, everyone gets desperate, and wars are started.(S.S.) There was a major oil spill in Alaska. The transport of oil is hazardous to the fading arctic ecosystem. Source: Major oil spill in Alaska Author: Jason leopold (K.S.) (S.S.)

The more we drill for oil, the more chance that there will be an oil spill, killing hundreds of animals, and alot of the animals in the arctic are already endangered. It would take the ecosystem hundreds of years to fully recover from the devastation of the spill. (S.S) Example: wolves, caribou, musk oxen, polar bears, seals, sealions, walruses, whales and several species of migratory seabirds and fish. (K.S.)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska--Alaska is melting.Glaciers are receding. Permafrost is thawing. Roads are collapsing. Forests are dying. Villages are being forced to move, and animals are being forced to seek new habitats. What's happening in Alaska is a preview of what people farther south can expect, said Robert Corell, a former top National Science Foundation scientist who heads research for the **Arctic**Climate Impact Assessment team."If you want to see what will be happening in the rest of the world 25 years from now, just look at what's happening in the **Arctic**," Corell said.Alaska and the **Arctic** are warming up fast, top international scientists will tell senior officials from eight **Arctic**countries at a conference in Iceland this week. They will disclose early, disturbing findings from a massive study of polar climate change.In Alaska, year-round average temperatures have risen by 5 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1960s, and average winter temperatures soared 8 degrees in that period, according to the federal government. The entire world is expected to warm by 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, predict scientists at the International Panel on Climate Change-SIRS Discover (S.S.)

ANWR was wilderness - a legal designation under the 1964 Wilderness Act that requires an area to be left in a natural state, undistrubed by human activity. Oil and gass development on the coastal plain in the northeast corner of the refuge along the Beufort Sea, but allowed the opportunity for a futur act of congress to allow it. Source: [|www.refugeassociation.org] article: Protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (K.S.)

Greenland's government has approved drilling in Baffin Bay, which is close to a maritime boundary with Canada. This descision surprised Canada's environment minister, who wants the highest environmental standards. (J.F.)

“All this activity has environmental groups up in arms. ** Oil ** companies insist that they can take on the ** Arctic ** safely, yet there is no proven way to deal with a spill. The biggest threat is not from the wells -- which will be few and tightly controlled -- but from ** oil ** tankers. Pack ice, storms and icebergs mean that shipping accidents are almost inevitable, and spilt ** oil ** takes decades to break down in the cold ** Arctic ** waters. Nothing much can be done to cope with a spill in the winter beyond tracking the ice, waiting for the ** oil ** to surface in the summer melt, then setting it alight. Yet calls for an ** Arctic **-wide moratorium on ** oil ** exploration until safety measures are in place have gone unheeded. Over the last three years, big ** oil ** companies have teamed up with Norway's independent research organisation SINTEF, based in Trondheim, to test ways of fighting spills, such as mechanical skimmers, dispersants and performing controlled burns on deliberately spilled ** oil **. Results show they are still far from knowing how to cope.” Alan Underson “All this activity has environmental groups up in arms. ** Oil ** companies insist that they can take on the ** Arctic ** safely, yet there is no proven way to deal with a spill. The biggest threat is not from the wells -- which will be few and tightly controlled -- but from ** oil ** tankers. Pack ice, storms and icebergs mean that shipping accidents are almost inevitable, and spilt ** oil ** takes decades to break down in the cold ** Arctic ** waters. Nothing much can be done to cope with a spill in the winter beyond tracking the ice, waiting for the ** oil ** to surface in the summer melt, then setting it alight. Yet calls for an ** Arctic **-wide moratorium on ** oil ** exploration until safety measures are in place have gone unheeded. Over the last three years, big ** oil ** companies have teamed up with Norway's independent research organisation SINTEF, based in Trondheim, to test ways of fighting spills, such as mechanical skimmers, dispersants and performing controlled burns on deliberately spilled ** oil **. Results show they are still far from knowing how to cope.” Alan Underson Robert Thompson, who lives in Kaktovik, a small Inupiat community on the coast of the Arctic's Beaufort Sea -- where Shell got provisional approval to drill -- believes that Shell's drilling plans must have been approved by people who don't know the Arctic. Even in the summer months, conditions can be so foreboding that it wouldn't be possible to mount an oil-spill response effort. A recent report for the Canadian government reinforces this point. In the Canadian Beaufort Sea, conditions (precluding sea ice) in June -- the tamest month on the Arctic calendar -- would keep spill response efforts from being launched 20 percent of the time. September and October? Forget about it. Despite this, Shell plans call for drilling beginning in July and continuing through Oct. 31. Despite warnings that global warming is accelerating the melting of the Arctic, sea ice is still found in the Arctic Ocean every month of the year. Arctic seas are far from placid. Even in the summer months, hurricane-like storms form 20-foot waves and create conditions that are so harsh that human beings often cannot step outside. Then there's the Arctic's remoteness. The nearest deepwater port and Coast Guard station is 1,000 miles away. That's roughly the distance between Washington, DC and New Orleans. Coast Guard Admiral Robert Papp recently told Congress "we have nothing" when it comes to the resources and capability to respond to an oil spill in the Arctic. Importantly, no one has been able to come up with a workable way to clean up oil in ice. Shell's spill plan includes techniques that are familiar to anyone who followed the Deepwater Horizon disaster -- in situ burning, dispersants, booms -- methods that were difficult to implement in the Gulf's calm, temperate seas, close to modern infrastructure. When oil companies tested some of these approaches in the Arctic (over 10 years ago), the experiment was declared a "failure." Since then, nothing has changed in Arctic oil-spill response technology. US says not enough known about the Arctic What's more, America's own science experts -- the United States Geological Survey -- say it's "difficult, if not impossible" to make informed decisions about drilling in the Arctic because too much remains unknown about the Arctic's marine environment and the wildlife that depend on it. This week, in Point Hope, Alaska, on the Chukchi Sea where Shell also hopes to drill, Inupiat people from all over Alaska's Arctic coast are coming together for one simple reason -- to pass on the ways of the past to the future. Community elders are sitting down with young people to teach them the traditions that have enabled them to survive in the harsh climate for thousands of years. Point Hope itself, a small spit of land jutting into Earth's northernmost ocean, is the oldest continually inhabited community in North America -- people have lived and thrived there since long before the planet was divvied up by nation states. But the air there is not filled with defeat. As Inupiat leader Rosemary Ahtuangaruak said: "I will continue to speak out for my people with the hope that future generations will continue to be Inupiat -- and not just residents in an industrialized area destroyed by drilling." The Obama administration should not rush forward with drilling in the Arctic Ocean until Shell can provide a proven plan to clean up an oil spill, and until there is more scientific information about the impacts drilling could have in this pristine, unique place. 13186132071318613207 By Emilie Surrusco **//__ Opposition Assertions for Arctic Drilling Debate __//**

= Focus more on alternitive fuels =
 * Already used up half of the worlds oil, and if we continue to drill oil at this rate, theories show that almost all of the oil will be gone by 2050
 * Oil is a finite resource and it will 100s of millions of years to produce as much oil as we had before we started drilling in the late 1800’s.
 * Cost of the alternative energy=the true cost of energy
 * Cost is too high; our economy is based too much on this resource.
 * = Once it’s gone, our economy will be destroyed =
 * The more you pump, the less pressure, and the less pressure, the more money it will cost to extract the oil from the earth.
 * Oil causes serious environmental impacts such as oil spills.
 * In the Arctic, standard oil spill cleaning methods are not effective in the remote climate.
 * We need to start limiting our oil use, and not keep drilling, and keep using the same amount, if not more.
 * = Killing and wiping out all the animals and their habitats =
 * Can create big war for oil
 * Counter productive by drilling widely
 * People are already drilling
 * Spending money for utilities
 * Chain reaction from global warming
 * === Global Warming ===
 * Don’t need oil to have a successful country/government
 * Could be a resource conflict
 * Peak oil Polar bear habitats
 * We need to change to different fuels
 * Issue w/ car exhaust, so get away from fossil fuels!
 * Peak oil already been reached. Save the remaining oil for future generations
 * Peak oil already been reached. Save the remaining oil for future generations

Billions of sea organisms died. Millions have fish died, or were not born due to interference from the oil spill. Tens of thousands of larger animals were killed due to the oil spill. All of these casualties can be attributed to the American Obsession with oil. (EL)

