Arctic Climate Impact Analysis

Con: No, America is heading towards a better way to produce energy, a clean renewable energy that is not dangerous to the environment.

In the case of the Arctic over the past twenty-five years, biologists have been studying and have quantified how underground petroleum activities disturb the life on the surface. For the past thirty-years, petroleum geologists have worked to create less destructive methods of locating and removing oil. Typically people think of science and technology working together to better our lives. In the Arctic situation it is more a case of science versus technology. These two groups of scientists, biologists and geologists, have been pitted against one another. It is difficult to determine who to believe and in that decision, it depends on what one feels to be more important: nature or need. What we must also consider is who the funding for the studies is coming from.

Is developing the Arctic for oil and natural gas worth the powerful negative impact on the environment and native communities? The article published on September 20th, 2013 by Jennifer Weeks titled, “Future of the Arctic” examines the Arctic and the controversies within it. In the pro/con section of her article, Weeks asks the question, “Should the United States suspend Arctic offshore drilling?” Senator Mark Begich argues that the resources in the Arctic are too great of an opportunity to miss out on. Although Arctic drilling is a controversial topic, many people believe it should continue because of the financial and ethical circumstances; however, evidence to support this is lacking, which leads to the other side of the debate to be in

Would you like to have the US drill near your community? The United States is planning to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) located in Alaska. Being a US citizen I believe we should not drill for oil in Alaska because it would affect the economy, the environment, and the Alaskans. Drilling for oil in ANWR can be beneficial in some ways, but this is why it is unreliable.

Forests control the amounts of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere therefore contributing to global warming. However we as a planet have a problem… deforestation.

Alberta has the second biggest recoverable oil patch in the world after Saudi Arabia, which hides underneath Canada’s boreal forest. Indeed, the Albertan oil patch consists of tar sands, also referred as oil sand, a combination of clay, sand, water and bitumen – a thick and sticky form of crude oil. Tar sands are mined and transported to extraction installations, where the oil-rich bitumen is extracted from the mixture. Alberta holds at least 175 billion barrels of crude bitumen throughout its vast territory, thus the industry disturbs a 149 000 square kilometers area – about the size of England –, where the land was removed due to the mining required to access the oil sands. The bitumen is separated from the mixture by using large amounts of fresh water – about four barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil – and is heated by natural gas, thus requiring larger quantities of energy and water than conventional extraction. Indeed, the industry itself results in the emission of more carbon dioxide in a year than all Canadian cars combined, thus accelerating climate change at an alarming rate. The Albertan industry exploits the water from the Athabasca River, which is fed by the Canadian Rocky Mountains’ glacier, which shrinks at a frightening rate and is further endangered by the carbon emission of the industry. Therefore, the extraction of oil sands in Alberta results in a cycle of consumption that truly endangers the environment. The clay and minerals from the oil

Oil is one of the world’s most used natural resources and America uses a large margin of it. The United States uses 30 percent of the world’s oil and imports most of it. There have been many ideas to reduce the amount of oil the United States imports including one that states The United States should drill in the ANWR of Alaska. The ANWR is a 19 million acre chunk of land that is home to many animals such as bears and otters along the coast. The drilling proposal refers to drilling in about eight percent of the ANWR which is approximately 1.5 million acres. The other rugged terrain would be permanently closed for drilling. This proposed solution is one of the ideas to cut down on the 58 percent of the oil the United States currently imports. As a result of the amount of oil imported into the United States, should the United States drill for oil in Alaska? Drilling for oil in the ANWR could have many pros and cons but would the overall result be a noticeable change for the United States? The United States should not drill in Alaska for oil because of the resulting damage to the natural environment, negative pull on the economy, and how it would affect the native Alaskans.

As some of you may know, Canada is one of the world’s largest energy producers and is a principal source of US energy imports. Canada has oil sands that are unconventional, but a significant contributor to the growth of liquid fuel supply (North America). Oil sands are areas where the sand absorbed the oil. Refineries pull the oil from

It is one of the last remaining ecosystems to be largely untouched by man. To drill in that area is to drill into, and to destroy a vital portion of the ANWR. The pursuit of oil would also lead to the contamination of water. With the coastal plain already having very low amounts of fresh water, this would be a crippling blow to the area’s diversity. In addition to this, the ANWR’s wetlands would be crippled. Contamination of the wetlands would lead to the loss of many species that solely inhabit that area. To see what might happen to the ANWR if oil is drilled there, one could look at nearby, Prudhoe Bay. The constant development in the area has led to what is essentially a cesspool of human waste. As the article “The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Should Be Conserved,” said, “The result (of oil drilling in Prudhoe Bay) is a landscape defaced by mountains of sewage, sludge, scrap metal, garbage and more than 60 contaminated waste sites that contain—and often leak—acids, lead, pesticides, solvents and diesel fuel.” One counterargument to these statements is that, oil is worth more than the ecology of one area. This thinking, while seemingly practical, is flawed. The tundra is a rapidly shrinking biome. If the tundra is left to rot, countless species of plants and

Have you ever wanted to spend months in temperatures that regularly are -30°? Many people cannot stand cold temperatures such as 32° even just for the couple minutes it takes while they are walking from their car to the store. In the story “Extreme Research Shows How Arctic Ice Is Dwindling” by Andy Isaacson he discusses how the arctic ice is dwindling, what will happen as a result of that and then finally about his trip where he was able to observe it all firsthand. The sea of ice is unlike how most people would imagine it to be as depicted on maps, instead it is not all connected but rather it is many different pieces all just floating near one another.

Canada is one of the Arctic States that according to the international law have presence economic activity on the Arctic shelf, while the status of the Canadian sector in the Arctic is the second largest which is 25% after Russian Federation sector which 40%. Arctic coastal states has same interests in the arctic zone due to the rich of covered and undiscovered natural resources. Canada also has the interest in the Arctic to exploit Arctic’s vast natural resources which is the oil and gas. As noted that the coastal area of the Canadian Arctic has huge reserves of methane hydrate, and according to the Heinenen (2014), if commercial production launched in the future, these reserves would last for several hundred years. Yet the current situations in the Canadian Arctic is the Canada does not conduct drilling on its Arctic shelf and also the safe technologies have not yet been developed.

The Prudhoe Bay field is a deltaic high quality sandstone reservoir that is about 500 feet thick with porosity in the 15-30%. The Permian to Triassic age horizon is the largest producing in the field and is referred to as the Ivishak reservoir. The reservoir is made up of a series of clasitc near-shore marine deposits as well as sandstones and conglomeratic braided-stream deposits (Erikson, Sneider 1997). The reservoir is a structural stratigraphic trap by faulting in the north and south. It is bounded in the north and south by major faulting in the the Barrow Arch and Brooks Range mountains (Figure 5). The east is a truncated Cretaceous horizon that separates it from the Canadian basin. The Prudhoe Bay field is 225 square miles and was discovered in 1968 but because of how remote and undeveloped that area was at the time, exploration did not begin until 1977. Since then it has developed into the largest oil and gas play in North America (Figure 6). Figure 7 highlights the source/reservoir rocks and the types of ongoing and potential

There has been much controversy when it comes to oil companies in the Arctic over the past few years. The oil industry has invested heavily in the development of Alaska’s Arctic natural resources and Shell has invested $3 billion to purchase leases and prepare for exploratory drilling in the Beaufort and Chuckchi seas (WWF, 2010). Between 2008 and 2010 Imperial Oil Ltd., British Petroleum, Chevron and Exxon Mobil purchased offshore exploration leases in the Canadian Beaufort Sea and the Canadian government continues to sell offshore exploration licenses for Arctic energy exploration (Noble et al., 2012).

Alaska is one of American biggest geographical region where oil could be found; Alaska also holds one of the biggest wildlife populations as well. The drilling in Alaska has many environmental aspects to it, which include impact on marine life, on the land itself, and lastly I’ll like to go over the environmental impact of oil spills. Let’s go over the first aspect marine life; the process to find potential oil reserves is very complex. “To find potential oil reserves, researchers send seismic waves into the ground. The waves bounce backs to reveal the buried topography and can hint at a possible reserve. But seismic noise disorientates whales and leads to mass beaching” (Nixon 2008.) Nixon here explains the extensive process of finding an oil reserve,; if you look at Alaska on the map, it is surrounded by the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, where many oil reserves could be found. The seismic not only disorientates whale with mass bleaching but also affects also Alaskan Fish species such as the walleye Pollock, white sturgeon, whitefish, and other along the Alaska Gulf and Bering Sea. The wildlife located in Alaskan vast geographically parts has had many

The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) is a beautiful 19.6 million acre coastal plain, and is located in the Northeastern part of Alaska. ANWR is home to numerous species of wildlife and one of the largest untapped oil preserves in the United States. There is an immense debate between the opposing environmentalists and the politicians who want to drill for oil on a section of ANWR, which is only 1.8% of the refuge. Environmentalists who oppose drilling for oil in Alaska say the wildlife and the native populations are threatened by drilling for oil in ANWR, even though most of the natives are strongly in favor of drilling. ANWR could save the US from having to import $800 billion worth of foreign oil, creating