GOP Again Bids to Take
ANWR
By Jason
Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Thursday 16 March 2006
The Senate is prepared to vote on a budget
bill Thursday that includes a measure to open up the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge to drilling - just as the region suffers through one of
the worst oil spills in history.
The provision to permit drilling in ANWR was
included in a resolution passed last week by the Senate Budget
Committee. The full Senate is expected to vote on the issue as early as
Thursday.
The measure was prepared by the
Republican-controlled Senate in such a way that it would be protected
from a filibuster by Senate Democrats opposed to the issue. Drilling in
ANWR has been debated at least half a dozen times over the past five
years.
The issue is one of the cornerstones of
President Bush's National Energy Policy. Bush has said that drilling in
ANWR is crucial in order for the United States to cut its dependence on
foreign oil.
Environmentalists and numerous lawmakers have
derided the plan, saying it would lead to the destruction of caribou and
other wildlife that live in the refuge. Moreover, severe safety and
technological issues have plagued the big oil companies that drill in
nearby Prudhoe Bay and who would be responsible for breaking ground in
ANWR should the Senate measure pass.
Because the companies have yet to take
measures to address the safety issues at their Prudhoe Bay operations
and make much-needed technological upgrades, there have been dozens of
oil spills in the area. The situation would likely become even worse if
ANWR were to be opened up to exploration, according to environmental
officials and activist groups.
Just two weeks ago, the worst spill in the
history of oil development in Alaska's North Slope forced the closure of
five oil processing centers in the region. Alaskan state officials said
that as much as 260,000 gallons of crude oil leaking out of a pipeline
in an oil field jointly owned by Exxon Mobil, BP Plc and ConocoPhillips
blanketed two acres of frozen tundra near Prudhoe Bay - just a short
distance from where President Bush has proposed opening up ANWR to
drilling.
The oil spill went undetected for about five
days before an oilfield worker detected the scent of hydrocarbons during
a drive through the area on March 2 that led him to believe there was a
spill from one of the facilities.
It's expected that last week's spill will
take a crew of 60 at least two weeks to clean up and to restore crude
production to pre-spill levels. The petroleum processing centers will
remain closed until then.
The spill underscores the hazards of drilling
in the Arctic, despite the fact that oil company executives have
downplayed the severity of the technological problems likely to be
associated with it.
Last year, unbeknownst to the federal
lawmakers who debated the merits of drilling in ANWR, the Alaska
Department of Environmental Conservation started laying the groundwork
to pursue civil charges against BP and the corporation's drilling
contractor for failing to report massive oil spills at its Prudhoe Bay
operation, located just 60 miles west of ANWR.
Despite those dire warnings, neither Congress
nor the Senate has shown interest in investigating the whistleblowers'
claims or held hearings about the potential problems that could result
from drilling in ANWR.
But BP employees have warned lawmakers that
oil spills like the one that took place a couple of weeks ago could
happen in ANWR if upgrades aren't made to the oil companies' drilling
equipment.
In March of 2002, a BP whistleblower went
public with his claims of maintenance backlogs and employee shortages at
BP's Prudhoe Bay operations that he said could become even worse if ANWR
is opened up to exploration.
The whistleblower, Robert Brian, who worked
as an instrument technician at Prudhoe Bay for 22 years, had a lengthy
meeting with aides to Senators Joseph Lieberman and Bob Graham, both
Democrats, to discuss his claims. But the senators have never followed
up on his claims.
At the time, Brian said he supported opening
up ANWR to oil exploration but said BP has imperiled that goal because
it is "putting Prudhoe workers and the environment at risk."
"We are trying to change that so we don't
have a catastrophe that ends up on CNN and stops us from getting into
ANWR," he said, according to a March 13, 2002, report in the Anchorage
Daily News.
BP has long been criticized for poorly
managing the North Slope's aging pipelines, safety valves and other
critical components of its oil production infrastructure.
The company has in the past made minor
improvements to its valves and fire detection systems and hired
additional employees but has dropped the ball and neglected to maintain
a level of safety at its facilities on the North Slope.
Chuck Hamel, a highly regarded activist who
is credited with exposing dozens of oil spills and the subsequent
cover-ups related to BP's shoddy operations at Prudhoe Bay, sent a
letter to Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) on April 15, 2005, saying the
senator was duped by oil executives and state officials during a recent
visit to Alaska's North Slope.
"You obviously are unaware of the cheating by
some producers and drilling companies," Hamel said in the letter to
Domenici, an arch proponent of drilling in ANWR. "Your official Senate
tour" of Alaska last March "was masked by the orchestrated 'dog and pony
show' provided you at the new Alpine Field, away from the real world of
the Slope's dangerously unregulated operations."
Back in the 1980s, Hamel was the first person
to expose weak pollution laws at the Valdez tanker port as well as
electrical and maintenance problems with the trans-Alaska oil
pipeline.
Hamel has said that not only do oil spills
continue on the North Slope because BP neglects to address maintenance
issues, but the oil behemoth's executives have routinely lied to Alaskan
state representatives and members of the United States Senate and
Congress about the steps they're taking to correct the problems.
Hamel has obtained some damning evidence on
BP to back up his claims. He has photographs showing oil wells spewing a
brown substance known as drilling mud, which contain traces of crude
oil, on two separate occasions.
Hamel says he's determined to expose BP's
shoddy operations and throw a wrench in President Bush's plans to open
up ANWR to drilling.
"Contrary to what President Bush has been
saying, the current BP Prudhoe Bay operations - particularly the
dysfunctional safety valves - are deeply flawed and place the
environment, the safety of the operations staff and the integrity of the
facility at risk. The president should delay legislation calling for
drilling at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," Hamel told the Wall
Street Journal last year.
In April of 2001, whistleblowers informed
Hamel and former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who at the time was
touring the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, that the safety valves at Prudhoe
Bay, which kick in in the event of a pipeline rupture, failed to close.
Secondary valves that connect the oil platforms with processing plants
also failed to close. And, because the technology at Prudhoe Bay would
be duplicated at ANWR, the potential for a massive explosion and huge
spills are very real.
"A major spill or fire at one of our
[processing centers] will exit the piping at high pressure, and leave a
half-mile-wide oil slick on the white snow all the way," Hamel said at
the time in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
That year, the Alaska Oil and Gas
Conservation Commission found high failure rates on some Prudhoe
wellhead safety valves. The company was put on federal criminal
probation after one of its contractors dumped thousands of gallons of
toxic material underground at BP's Endicott oil field in the 1990s. BP
pleaded guilty to the charges in 2000 and paid a $6.5 million fine, and
agreed to set up a nationwide environmental management program that has
cost more than $20 million.
Hamel also claimed that whistleblowers had
told of another cover-up, dating back to 2003, in which Pioneer Natural
Resources and its drilling contractor, Nabors Alaska Drilling, allegedly
disposed of more than 2,000 gallons of toxic drilling mud and fluids
through the ice "to save the cost of proper disposal on shore."
Hamel has had his share of detractors,
notably BP executives and several Alaskan state officials, as well as
the federal EPA, who have branded him a conspiracy theorist.
But last March, Hamel was vindicated when
Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed his claims
of major spills in December 2004 and July 2003 at the oil well owned by
BP and operated by its drilling contractor, Nabors, on the North Slope,
which the company had never reported as required by state law.
Hamel filed a formal complaint in January
2005 with the EPA, claiming he had pictures showing a gusher spewing a
brown substance. An investigation by Alaska's Department of
Environmental Conservation determined that as much as 294 gallons of
drilling mud was spilled when gas was sucked into wells, causing sprays
of drilling mud and oil that shot up as high as 85 feet into the
air.
Because both spills exceeded 55 gallons, BP
and Nabors were obligated under a 2003 compliance agreement that BP
signed with Alaska to immediately report the spills. That didn't occur,
said Leslie Pearson, the agency's spill prevention and emergency
response manager.
President Bush has said that the oil and gas
industry can open up ANWR without damaging the environment or displacing
wildlife. But the native Gwich'in Nation, whose 7,000 members have lived
in Alaska for more than 20,000 years, say President Bush is wrong.
"Existing oil development has displaced
caribou, polluted the air and water and created havoc with the
traditional lifestyles of the people," said Jonathan Solomon, chairman
of the Gwich'in Steering Committee, in a May 7, 2005, interview with the
Financial Times. "No one can tell us that opening the Arctic Refuge to
development can be done in an environmentally sensitive way with a small
footprint. It cannot be done."
Jason Leopold spent two
years covering California's electricity crisis as Los Angeles bureau
chief of Dow Jones Newswires. Jason has spent the last year cultivating
sources close to the CIA leak investigation, and is a regular
contributor to t r u t h o u t.
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