OIL SPILLS IN THE ARCTIC

Oil spills in Alaska are a regular occurance. Most people are familiar with the tragic Exxon Valdez spill where 11 million gallons of crude oil were spilled in Prince William Sound in 1989 causing the deaths of tens of thousands of animals. Most people do not realize that between 300-400 spills per year occur in Alaska. This means spills occur at a rate greater than one per day. The spills range from a few gallons to many which involve thousands of gallons of oil.

Photo by US Environmental Protection Agency

Oil spills are so commonplace that the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has established a website for the Prevention and Emergency Response Program or PERP. You can read about the latest spills and cleanup efforts at their website. Most of these you will not see reported by the media. For example, a spill in April 2001 on the North Slope resulted in 94,000 gallons of processing waste (a mixture of oil and water) spilling on to the arctic tundra.

Photo by Alaska Dept. Environmental Conservation

The media does report some spills however. Two spills at the end of February, 2001, were reported by the Environmental News Network.

Many consider the Alaska Pipeline itself is ripe for a major disaster, according to an article published in the Washington Post in November 2000. The pipeline is over 25 years old and the oil industry has not spent the money required for proper maintenance, according to whistleblowers.

The oil industry continues to overstate its ability to respond to oil disasters. In the fall of 1999, a consortium of industry groups attempted to demonstrate their ability to clean up oil spills in open water and on broken ice. As reported by the Trustees for Alaska the drill, which was required for regulatory approval, was a dismal failure.

The Oil Industry asks us to "trust them" that oil production in the Wildlife Refuge would not harm animals.

Would you?