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Oil Drilling in ANWR

Oil Drilling in ANWR. What’s the issue?. What is ANWR?. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Contains 7.9 million ha (19.6 million acres) of land Abundant wildlife:

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Oil Drilling in ANWR

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  1. Oil Drilling in ANWR What’s the issue?

  2. What is ANWR? • Arctic National Wildlife Refuge • Contains 7.9 million ha (19.6 million acres) of land • Abundant wildlife: • caribou, polar bears, grizzly bears, musk ox, doll sheep, wolves, wolverines, snow geese, and many other species – many of which are threatened or endangered • Its habitats are remote, complete, and undisturbed: • lagoons, coastal marine areas; coastal plain tundra; alpine tundra, forest-tundra transition, boreal forest

  3. What’s the Issue? • Coastal region may contain the last big, onshore liquid petroleum field in North America • As much as 12 billion barrels of oil and several trillion cubic feet of natural gas • Could provide 510,000 barrels to 1.45 million barrels per day (In 2008, US using consumed about 20 million barrels of oil per day).

  4. What’s the Issue? • BUT… • calving ground of 130,000 caribou • nesting area for millions of snow geese, tundra swans, shorebirds, and other waterfowl • denning area for polar bears, arctic foxes and wolves • year-round home to about 350 musk ox

  5. What’s the Issue? • Drilling may destroy wetlands, introduce noise and pollution, and construction could drive away wildlife • Roads • Drilling pads • Helicopters • Construction equipment, etc. • May be able to reduce these impacts by: • Collecting wastes • Constructing in winter • Reducing number of drilling pads • Impacts <10% ANWR • Could be very profitable, esp. for northern Alaskans • Could reduce US spending on foreign oil by $135 billion to $327 billion by 2030

  6. What’s the issue? • ANWR oil production would probably amount to 0.4 percent to 1.2 percent of total world oil consumption in 2030 • Would probably only slightly reduce American dependence on foreign oil (from 54% to 48%)

  7. What’s the Issue • Might only reduce price of oil by $0.41 to $1.44 a barrel • Would take 10 years to develop  oil by 2018-2020 • Production likely to decline by 2030 • Could likely save more oil than would be extracted by simply increasing fuel efficiency of vehicles in US by aveof 1 mpg  faster and cheaper!

  8. Let’s See It! Complete video guide!!

  9. Alternatives? Oil/Tar Sands Combination of clay, sand, water, and bitumen - a heavy black viscous oil Mined and processed to extract the oil-rich bitumen, which is then refined into oil Cannot be pumped from the ground -instead they are mined (strip mining) or extracted by underground heating (uses energy!)

  10. Alternatives? Oil Shale Sedimentary rock that contains solid bituminous materials Released as petroleum-like liquids when the rock is heated Heated either after mining or underground and then pumped Must then be refined

  11. Coal-bed Methane Read about it! P. 437 – this is your homework!

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