Take Action!
Say no to new lease sales in the U.S. Arctic Ocean.
After last year’s BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, President Obama promised cleaner, safer energy development. Yet the administration is on the brink of approving industry plans to drill up to 10 exploratory oil wells in the extreme, remote, and fragile Arctic Ocean, beginning this summer. In addition, the federal government just released a draft offshore drilling plan that could open even more of America’s Arctic waters to oil and gas leasing over the next five years, even though 3.8 million acres already are under lease.
The April 2010 rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico took 11 lives and spewed almost 5 million gallons of oil. Containing the spill took three months, despite a mild climate and easy access to population centers with numerous oil spill response vessels and personnel.
Imagine, if you can, an accident in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s sparsely populated north coast. The sea is dominated by fog, shifting ice, subzero temperatures, hurricane-force winds, and weeks-long storms.
Responding to an oil spill in such conditions would be challenging enough. Equally daunting is the region’s lack of a road system, major ports, adequate communication technology, and other basic infrastructure. The nearest Coast Guard base is 1,000 miles away in Kodiak, Alaska. The Coast Guard has just one working icebreaker in the region and has said it would be impossible to send the 3,000 people it deployed to work on the Deepwater Horizon spill to the Arctic.
Before Americans can trust that offshore Arctic exploration will be done safely and cleanly, the federal government needs to ensure that:
- Industry has spill response plans that work and that have been tested in Arctic conditions.
- Biologically significant areas are identified and protected so that bowhead whales, walrus, ice seals, polar bears, and other vulnerable marine mammals found nowhere else in the nation will retain critical habitat.
- Alaska Natives, who for centuries have practiced a traditional way of life dependent on the area’s national bounty, have a voice in planning.
- Long-term scientific research and monitoring programs are put in place.
Science, not politics, needs to guide decisions on whether, when, where, and how to drill in America’s Arctic Ocean. President Obama pledged cleaner, safer energy development. Americans expect him to live up to that promise.
Learn more about the Obama administration's Proposed 5-Year OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2012-2017.
View a photo gallery of Arctic life at risk:
