Oil Exploration Ramps Up In US Arctic 182
ananyo writes "A new round of exploratory oil drilling is due to begin in the Arctic this July. The oil giant Shell was granted permission some months ago by the U.S. government to drill two exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea and three in the Chukchi Sea, both north of Alaska, this year — between 15 July and late September. The project is finally coming to fruition after years spent fighting legal challenges. It will be the first oil-exploration program to run in U.S. Arctic waters since 2000, and could mark the start of the first offshore commercial drilling in the American north, although it would take another decade to establish production wells."
This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
For techy people? Oh well, probably more topical that a fake severed head on a fake TV show.
FWIW, Shell has drilled in the Arctic before - several other exploratory wells. They've done quite a bit of due diligence to mitigate problems including painting their disaster recovery ship a dark blue so as not to scare the whales.
They realize quite perfectly if they have a major spill or blowout then the game is over. Further, there is no assurance that this will go anywhere beyond the exploratory wells - they may not find oil, they may not find much oil, it may cost too much to pull out.
And if they wait long enough, the whole area may turn into a tropical paradise, much like it was when the algae, etc. that created the biomass that subsequently became oil was alive.
So long, Arabia (Score:3, Interesting)
The sooner we decouple [wsj.com] from the Muslim extremists the better
the what ??? (Score:1, Interesting)
Economist article on Arctic warming (Score:5, Interesting)
The Economist has a funny quote in their article -http://www.economist.com/node/21556800 - on how faster-than-expected warming in the Arctic will open up previously inaccessible resources:
"Oil companies are reluctant to admit that climate change plays a part in their northward shift. They do not want to be seen to be profiting from the environmental damage to which their activities have contributed."
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Electric cars are not the answer. Better city planning, public transportation, and human-powered transportation are the answers.
The second half of the 20th century was an experiment in car-centric city planning. It failed.
Alaskan Pipline may have to shut down (Score:5, Interesting)
I drove along the pipeline road from Valdez to Fairbanks 6 years ago. Its an amazing thing to see,
Re:Economist article on Arctic warming (Score:4, Interesting)
They're not the only ones. Russia has also been making noises about creative interpretation of the international law rules about territorial waters. The UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (which the US has signed but not ratified) allows countries to measure their territorial waters and exclusive economic zone from the edge of the continental shelf rather than from land. Russia has claimed that a undersea mountain range crossing over the North Pole is part of the East Siberian Shelf, which if allowed gives them sovereignty over the North Pole and exclusive economic control over a vast swath of the Arctic Ocean running from Komsomolets Island to almost Greenland.
With about equal justification, Denmark has argued that the same range is an extension of Greenland, and Canada that it is an extension of North America. Russia has already sent a deep submersible to plant the Russian flag at the North Pole. If there are significant resources found in an ice-free region of what is now international waters, we could well see a serious conflict develop as each claimant seeks to control who gets to extract those resources.
This business of allowing territorial claims out to the continental shelf is insane, and very dangerous.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Electric cars are a stupid idea. And they will be until we get much better batteries, they must be smaller, lighter, charge faster and be cheaper
Those are easy to fix. They have all been fixed on a small scale already, and the solution scales well. The problem is that nobody wants to invest the capital to make it work. Everyone expects the government to pony up a trillion dollars or so for the fix, so any private work done before that is at a loss. After all, we spent multiple trillions to kill two people (neither of which tried for the reason we initiated aggression against them), so what's another trillion to greatly improve the US? If we can find so much money to ship overseas, why can't we spend a fraction of that domestically?
Eletric cars are easy. They pre-dated IC for a reason (they were easy). The *only* issue left is that with everything solved, nobody will do it. Selling a few here or there to the niche makes more money and protects the embedded interests better than raising CAFE to 50 and mandating appropriate standards on electric cars, which would solve the problem in less than a year.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Or we can just not drill and have you pay more at the pump?
Or let Canada get the money instead and really pollute the environment with its tar sands?
Why is it evil to help poor native Americans living in these villages get free education and money for groceries and a better life for their kids? No matter where you spend your money you subsidize people regardless through standard economics. Alaska pays to use its resources because most of the population is native and they own a majority stake in the pipeline. It is their land so why can't they keep it?
So where I used to live has resources and a large part of the economy is more dependent on that than any other source. Natives fish around the oil well in Prudhoe Bay all the time and the water is prestine and clean. They have a stake in making sure it is.
I am not an ulta conservative nutcase or work in the oil industry. I am just giving slashdotters another perspective.