Drill off Alaska coast? Gulf mess renews debate

[cal04]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110422/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill_arctic_drilling

A year after the disastrous Gulf oil spill, the prospect of a major accident in oil's next frontier — the icy waters off Alaska's north coast — has experts even more concerned.

With no roads connecting remote coastal towns, storms and fog that can ground aircraft, no deepwater ports for ships and the nearest Coast Guard station about 1,000 miles away — it would be nearly impossible to respond on the scale that was needed last year to stop the runaway oil well and clean up the mess. That means the burden to respond would rest to an even greater degree on the company doing the drilling.

Like a back country camper, an oil company drilling off Alaska would have to bring all the equipment needed to the isolated drilling site. And the federal government, at least in the early stages, would be far away from the scene.

(snip)
"We ought to be extremely careful about the Arctic, because we know that spill response and the Coast Guard cannot get to the Arctic very well," Cherry Murray, a member of the presidential oil spill panel, told a committee on ocean energy safety earlier this week. "And cleanup is going to be considerably more difficult."

[gratuitous]

1. According to acquaintances in Arctic Village

The area around Prudhoe Bay is a toxic dump of extractive industry offal. Nobody would notice a Deepwater Horizon-type explosion and gusher, and certainly the popular media would be in no position to cover it like they did the Gulf of Mexico. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. Additionally, after the American taxpayer spent all that money to put the Alaska Pipeline in, the stuff being extracted goes onto the world market for sale to the highest bidder. Very little of "our" oil goes to the U.S., but our good friends at Exxon-Mobil and Chevron make piles of money from it.

[Marblehead]

2. If the oil companies...

want to drill in the Arctic they will. There is no stopping them now.

[Generic Other]

3. They cleaned up the mess? Where? In their pants??

They cleaned up the mess! Well tell it to the new Tarball Beaches dotting the Gulf, the poison corexit blobs under water, the seafood no one will eat, the sick people.

They cleaned up the mess?