The Chukchi and Beaufort seas, off the northern coast of Alaska, host an incredible range of Arctic animals including polar bears, walruses, ice seals, and bowhead and beluga whales. These waters are also vital habitat for countless numbers of migratory birds that summer in the Arctic. For thousands of years, communities on the Arctic coast have depended on this healthy ocean ecosystem to support their subsistence way of life.
Now, oil and gas development may jeopardize these waters and those who depend on them. The federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) is considering whether to proceed with a Bush Administration plan to lease vast swaths of U.S. Arctic waters for oil and gas development. The exact consideration would offer 73 million acres of Arctic waters to oil and gas leasing.
It makes no sense to compound the stress of climate change by opening huge areas of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas to offshore oil and gas development. Such development will have serious adverse impacts on the region's wildlife and Native communities. Moreover, oil and gas activities in Arctic waters are risky: high winds, powerful seas, variable ice conditions, and cold temperatures may overcome even the best technologies. And if a spill does occur, there is no proven method to clean it up in ice-laden waters.
The World Wildlife Fund, which has the world's largest Arctic conservation program, also recommends that the most vulnerable and important areas of the Arctic be deemed permanently off-limits to oil and gas development. Such "no-go zones" should be based on the sensitivity and productivity of special priority areas, where oil spill response would be virtually impossible to clean up or where any spill would cause irreparable long-term damage. These areas include Bristol Bay in the southeastern Bering Sea in Alaska, known as "America's fish basket," where more than 40 percent of all wild seafood is caught in the United States. Oil and gas development in the bay is estimated to bring in $7.7 billion over the 25-40 year lifetime experts predict it would take to extract the resources. By comparison, the renewable fisheries of the Bristol Bay region are valued at $50-$80 billion over that same time period.
Obama's proposed budget, unveiled last month, would impose a new excise tax and fees on companies that take oil and natural gas from federal waters and reimposes a tax - again largely targeting the oil industry - to pay for cleaning up Superfund sites. The administration also supports an end to a tax break for the major oil companies that is supposed to spur development of domestic manufacturing jobs.
President George W. Bush abruptly ended a long-standing executive ban on off-shore oil leasing in Alaska's Bristol Bay in January 2007. Lease sales in Bristol Bay were then scheduled for 2011 despite recommendations by the National Marine Fisheries Service to exclude Bristol Bay from the nation's 2007-2012 outer continental shelf leasing program. The Obama Administration has extended the public comment period on all lease sales until September 2009 but has not overturned the Bristol Bay sales.
"We're turning the page on a new level of responsibility in terms of how we're dealing with the fiscal realities of the country," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "...Not everyone is going to be happy."
