SPECTRUM: Greens run ANWR scam

The environmental activists are doing a snow job on the American public in their battle against opening the ANWR coastal plain to oil drilling.

Their latest gambit was distribution of an article by former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell damning the drilling idea and accompanied by a beautiful photograph of a large caribou herd on rolling foothills with majestic mountains in the background. Jewell’s article describes, among other things, flying through the impressive Brooks Range and landing on a sand bar in a wild river valley.

The problem is that the area Jewell describes and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo depicts is far outside the area currently proposed for drilling.

The average person reading Jewell’s words and looking at that photo must feel aghast that the pro-oil crowd wants to bring drilling rigs into such an idyllic setting. But the truth is something far different.

The 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a flat, rather bleak plain with no significant scenery. Caribou do use the area in summertime but it should be noted that caribou herd that summers in the Prudhoe Bay area has thrived in the presence of oil operations. (The Prudhoe herd grew rapidly because wolves and bears — a major threat to caribou on their calving grounds — shied away from human activities.)

Jewell’s article and the USFWS photo are apparently not being distributed together, but both are being widely circulated. The article was originally published in The Seattle Times accompanied by a photo of an aircraft flying over a river that could actually be on the coastal plain. The photo of caribou in the idyllic mountainous setting has been around for a while and is being used as an illustration of the ANWR problem by many news media. The Anchorage Daily News has used the photo twice.

The scene depicted in the idyllic photo was actually taken in the far northeastern part of Alaska southeast of the village of Kaktovik. It is close to the easternmost boundary of the 1002 Area of ANWR, many miles from the area identified as most promising for an oil discovery. The area depicted is south of a coastal portion of ANWR where oil seeps have been encountered and industry has proposed drilling a new stratigraphic test.

The primary center of industry interest, a formation located through seismic testing and a stratigraphic test in the 1980s, is located in the western portion of the 1002 Area. The 1002 is a 1.5 million-acre coastal portion of the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge was created in 1960 and expanded in 1980 to incorporate the coastal plain, which offered high oil potential and the calving grounds of two major caribou herds. The 1002 area was designated for possible oil development because of its promising geology and existing oil seeps.

The 1002 area does have significant wildlife resources and those should be protected from interference by oil operations. Based on industry’s past operations in the area — in which I was intimately involved for many years — such interference is unlikely. In fact there are far larger wildlife resources in the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, to the west of Prudhoe Bay, where industry is currently active and wildlife conflicts are rare.

The smoke and mirror tactics of the environmentalist activists are nothing new. They have been doing that for well more than the 51 years I’ve been in Alaska. Fortunately, cooler heads have prevailed and our state has benefitted from a thriving oil and gas industry for many decades.

Let’s hope the nation gets to see through the scams and that development of the 1002 can proceed in a sensible and expeditious manner.

Reference . (https://www.adn.com/opinions/national-opinions/2018/06/06/let-the-trump-administration-know-anwr-is-no-place-for-oil-and-gas-drilling/