On Sep 2, 2008, at 10:42 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: >>>> Honestly, what _short-term_ effect will drilling in Anwar and on >>>> our >>> coasts >>> have on prices? >> >> The real question about drilling in areas that have been off limits >> until >> now is when do we do it? The record of spills from oil well >> drilling has >> been very good; the real damage has occurred in the transportation >> of the >> oil. > > > IIRC, the concerns about Anwar are not about possible oil spills, it > is the > environmental impact of the whole operation, even if nothing goes > wrong. > > Nick
A good indicator of how much environmental impact there would be is the drilling currently taking place on the North Slope. Everything needed to support the drilling crews and equipment -- and I mean everything, food, living supplies, drilling mud, logging/analysis equipment, the rigs themselves -- has to be trucked in on the Haul Road, and all the waste has to be trucked back down south for disposal, so the drilling crews are very good at not wasting any more than necessary, and their survival depends on not damaging too much of the permafrost they're sitting on, so "leave no trace" is sort of an economic necessity up there. I don't see why the lessons learned up there can't be applied to drilling in ANWR, if there's enough petroleum there to be worth it. (IIRC, the oil companies themselves aren't all that convinced that the petroleum reserves in ANWR are worth the cost of drilling to get at them, environmental damage or not. It's possible they could choose strategic spots and horizontal-drill fairly large areas of the reservoirs from those few spots, which they do anyway in a lot of producing areas nowadays anyway, but is there enough oil down there to recover the cost of drilling for it? How much geological surveying has really been done up there, honestly?) "I don't believe there's a power in the 'verse can stop Kaylee from bein' cheerful. Sometimes you just wanna duct-tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month." -- Capt. Mal Reynolds, "Serenity" _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
