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THE 2,000 ACRE SCAM
"The proponents of drilling add insult to injury with their spurious arguments in favor of drilling. 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."
--Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) April 10, 200, CR H3251
The Energy bill that narrowly passed the House of Representatives in April 2003 (H.R. 6) contains an amendment designed to make oil development in our nation's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge sound more palatable. One of these scams was an amendment by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) claiming that development would be confined to 2,000 acres.
The entire 1.5 million-acre coastal plain would still be opened to leasing and exploration.
Drilling proponents claim the House energy bill would open only 2,000 acres to the oil corporations, but in fact the entire 1.5 million acre "1002 area" would be opened to leasing and exploration.
There is no requirement that the 2,000 acres be contiguous.
Oil corporations want you to think its one compact area. But, as with the North Slope oil fields west of the Arctic Refuge, development would sprawl over a very large area.
Supporting infrastructure would have to stretch across the coastal plain.
The U.S. Geological Survey found that whatever oil and gas is under the coastal plain is in small deposits spread throughout the plain. This is why the bill includes the entire coastal plain and not a smaller portion of it. To produce oil from this vast area, networks of pipelines and roads would be built, fragmenting wildlife habitat.
Even if the 2,000 acres were contiguous, it would have a huge impact on the wilderness.
- The 12-lane wide New Jersey turnpike, which stretches more than 100 miles across the state, covers only 1,773 acres.
- Twenty oil fields the size of the Alpine oil field could be scatted across the Coastal Plain.
The 2,000 acres does not include all oil industry infrastructure or facilities.
The bill's 2,000 acres only included the area where oil facilities actually touched the ground, and excluded gravel mines, roads and pipelines (except their posts). It did not cover seismic or other exploration activities that would be done across the 1.5 million acre area. Air and noise pollution are carried far from developments.
The National Academy of Sciences found that impacts extend well beyond the immediate "footprint."
The negative effects of oil development on animals, vegetation, and human culture extend well beyond the immediate "footprint" of development, according to the Academy. It said, "the common practice of describing the effects of particular projects in terms of the area directly disturbed by roads, pads, pipeline, and other facilities ignores the spreading character of oil development on the North Slope and the consequences of this to. wildland values over an area far exceeding the area directly affected." The oil field industrial sprawl on the North Slope, including drill sties, airports, roads, and gravel mines has a direct "footprint" of 15,000 acres, but it actually spreads across an area of more than 640,000 acres, or 1,000 square miles, according to the National Academy of Sciences 2003 study, Cumulative environmental effects of oil and gas activities on Alaska's North Slope (P. 227).
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