One More Time from the National Wildlife Federation:
-The 1.5 million acre coastal plain where oil drilling is proposed is the most biologically productive part of the Refuge.
-The Refuge is home to thousands of calving caribou, denning polar bears, roaming grizzlies, and rare muskoxen.
-Northern pintail ducks, mallards, tundra swans and white fronted geese are among the many migratory species known to inhabit the coastal plain during the year.
-According to the US Geological Survey and the oil industry, it would take at least a decade to tap any oil from the Refuge.
-95% of Alaska's Arctic coastal lands are already available for oil exploration including the National Petroleum Reserve (the size of Indiana).
-Refuge oil will make no difference in prices at the pump. The amount of oil would be such a small percentage of daily world oil production that it would have no effect on the globally established price of oil.
-Audubon Society: The impact of the drilling operations would extend far beyond the 2,000 acres stated in the law. Road building, gravel pit excavation, and pipelines would create a spider web of encroachments on the entire coastal Refuge.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/12/121943/715And this...
"Gee," said the exploiters, "we're only going to drill in 2000 acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." Yes, and No. Yes the "development would be confined to 2,000 acres" but those don't have to be contiguous acres.
From the Audubon Society Magazine:
"---the sprawling network of roads and pipelines required to connect all these (oil and gas) facilities, plus eight 150 acre mines that would provide gravel for processing pads and docks, aren't counted. Audubon Alaska and the Alaska Coalition which includes 700 groups dedicated to protecting the State's public land, created a hypothetical scenario for development on the coastal plain: It would leave a spider web of sizeable prints throughout the plain--yet would still technically meet the letter of the law. The map is based on the infrastructure of existing oil fields (and assumes a four mile directional drilling reach from each site and on data showing probable oil distribution across the plain.
A 2003 review by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the impact on wildlife and vegetation would extend far beyond immediate oil field footprints."