Hey Folks,

I’ll be visiting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) 6 weeks from now, spending 2 weeks floating the Canning River, from the Upper Marsh Fork near the Continental Divide in the Brooks Range, 120 miles northward, out of the mountains and across the coastal plain to the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean. I can’t wait.

I just saw this article on CNN’s website. From the first paragraph, ‘President Bush said Saturday that the Saudis’ modest increase in oil production “doesn’t solve our problem,” ‘ –

The whole tone of the article is an acknowledgement that such a relatively small increase in oil supply, for the US, is meaningless. This increase could bring gas online to the American market almost immediately. At the same time, the current US administration is arguing for the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas extraction.

The US Govt’s own studies yield a mean peak in oil supply from the Refuge of under 900 000 barrels a day. That peak would arrive about 10-12 years AFTER the oil supply came online – and the oil is expected to take 10-15 years to come online after any legislation allowing drilling their might be passed.

Hey Folks,

As it hits the news again here in Alaska today, I thought I’d post about the current proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This post is from an earlier version on my other website, Expeditions Alaska. The photo above is a buddy of mine hiking on the coastal plain near the Canning River, Section 1002, of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

I presume most readers here have heard something about this, so I’ll skip the introductions, and go straight to my arguments here. I’m not a big fan of arguing by numbers, but we can discuss the ANWR issue with “facts” if you care to: in doing so, it might be interesting to approach this issue by first looking at, and dismantling, the arguments of proponents of drilling.

Next month I’ll look at some other reasons, probably more important, IMO, why we need to be as active as we can in our opposition to proposed legislation.

First, a look at the typical arguments put forward by those in favor of drilling:

1. National Security, dependence from Middle East foreign oil & the US is ‘better off’ if we drill our own oil.

Hey Folks,

Here’s the last of my series on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for now.

I’d like to write some more about the place, but will do that later. I wanted to post this because I read somewhere the other day that because the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not a pristine wilderness, we may as well go ahead and drill there. What so often is forgotten or neglected is that much of the disturbances to the pristine nature of the land here are a function os previous oil exploration. Out on the coastline, the tundra is littered with signs and debris of oil exploration. Whilst I was hiking one afternoon, I counted over 300 empty oil barrels lying on the tundra in one very small section of coastal plain.