According to Albuquerque Journal reporter Michael Coleman, Domenici’s tour of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) is to “help convince the American public that the time to open ANWR itself to oil production is finally at hand.”
Coleman quotes Gail Norton at length, who in turn spouts verbatim the talking points on the ANWR boosters’ website. Norton stresses that only a teensy-weensy bit of the 1.5 million acres proposed for exploration would be subject to what is termed “surface area development.”
“People should understand,” Norton says, “that the area to be opened in ANWR is just 2,000 acres, or less than one-hundredth of the reserve’s total acreage” (Do you ever get tired of Bushies scouring the globe telling people what they “gotta unnerstan”?)
But the 2,000-acre figure is a masterpiece of deceit. It completely and deliberately misrepresents the amount of disruption that would follow the opening of ANWR.
What they aren’t telling you is that the 2,000 acres does not have to be in one compact, contiguous parcel. Whatever oil might be in ANWR-some estimates run as low as a six-month supply for the SUVs of America-it is thought to be scattered widely in at least 30 locations.
Also, the 2,000-acre limit only includes the contact area where oil facilities actually touch the ground. To use a calculation done by Sen. John Sununu (R-NH), the 37 miles of pipeline at the Alpine oil field west of Prudhoe Bay (the field that Coleman waxes so lyrical about) would only count as one-quarter of an acre using the ANWR method of calculation, since that figure would only include where the pipelines’ 12-inch diameter posts hit the tundra.
Bushwatch, an organization devoted to the hopeless task of documenting the lies of the Bush Administration, dug into the actual legislation designed to open ANWR (http://bushwatch.org/drilling.htm). They track down what the so-called 2,000 acres really means. The map extrapolated from the data looks like northern New Jersey.
Here are the facilities included in the 2,000 acres:
* 8 Alpine-type fields @ 82 acres each
* 19 Satellite fields @ 37 acres each
* 26 Satellite fields @ 11 acres each
* 2 Docks @ 5 acres each
*2 Seawater treatment plants @ 100 acres each
Here are facilities that would not be included in the 2,000-acre limitation:
* Roads (in-field roads; main roads to docks, etc.)
* Pipelines (main trunk and sales lines, feeder lines; except for
negligible amounts for support posts)
* 8 Gravel mines @ 150 acres each
* Seismic exploration trails
* Exploration and delineation wells
* Water reservoir excavations, water withdrawal sites.
* Ice roads
And speaking of ice roads, the Administration carefully avoids any mention that the Arctic permafrost is melting so fast that Inuit and Inupiat villages are collapsing on their foundations of poles driven into the permafrost.
A couple of years ago Heather Wilson enthused about how little damage would be caused by ice roads used to carry ANWR exploitation traffic. Uh, Heather, the ice is melting. (Yes, I know; the Bush Administration has decreed there’s no such thing as global climate change.)
On a related note, the brilliantly titled Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit is slated for publication in August.
