19 March 2005

With all the talk about searching for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve maybe we should know a little something the reserve, about oil, our way of life and Alaskan caribou. Oil is central to our way of life. We only use about 20% of the oil we consume to fuel our transportation needs. In that 20% is buried all our individual needs for transportation and the moving of our food and other goods and stuff that builds our way of life. All the rest, 80% of that oil, is used in various processes wherever there are petroleum-based products made or used. The very computer I am using to write this is largely made of plastic. Parts of our automobiles, our trucks, even the comb I comb my hair with is made of plastic. We are a petroleum-based society. Every piece of plastic we have comes from oil. is everywhere. Even my vinyl chair seat cover is made from petroleum.

There are three herds of caribou in Alaska. The Central Arctic Herd lives in and around Prudhoe Bay and to the south. That little herd in the 1970’s numbered about 3,000 animals. It now numbers (in 2002) about 32,000. It has increased by 900%, largely because the animals use the elevated gravel pads and service roads to calve and to get away from the voracious mosquitoes and flies. Our oil money built those pads and roads and saved that herd.

The second herd is the Porcupine herd mentioned in the Star, Friday March 18, featured letter. In 1989 that herd numbered about 178,000 but by 2002 it had fallen to 123,000 animals. That herd lives to the east of the ANWR Central Plain, into Canada, well away from the area where work is going on. In some years that herd calves only in Canada while in other years it moves westward into the Central Area, depending upon the food supply. The Central Area is 100 miles long, east to west, and 30 miles deep, running from the coast to the mountains. Surprisingly, Canada has a huge oil complex about 200 miles east of ANWR that we never hear about. This caribou herd is declining as this Canadian production facility is at the Mackenzie River delta, many pumping sites in the water, and the animals cannot get to it to receive its benefits.

There is no data available to me on the Western Arctic Herd.

All of the North Slope oil facilities are designed to allow caribou migration. The pipes are elevated so the animals can walk underneath and the service roads provide good migration paths and clean places for calving. Calving is often within the operating oil fields near the rigs. I have a picture that shows hundreds of caribou within a half mile of an operating pumping site.

From just these brief statistics compiled over the last 30 years we can see that caribou and the oil fields can exist side-by-side and that the herds greatly benefit from that presence.

Some facts about ANWR: The Refuge totals 19.6 million acres. 8 million acres of that area has been designated as Wilderness. The Coastal Plain, 1.5 million acres, was set aside by Congress for study of oil potential. Only 2,000 acres will be impacted by oil development. Our drilling techniques are now so advanced that one production site can retrieve oil from a 64 square mile area. Thus, the nearest any two sites will be located is over eight miles apart. A few thousand caribou can fit between them. This area is not a pristine wilderness. There is a small town, Kaktovik, with a population of about 280 persons in the area. There are about 40 guide outfits that offer hunting and recreational services. Military installations operate on the Coastal Plain now and have done so in the past.

The snow geese are the same geese that migrate to Indianapolis in the winter. I see no indication that they are disturbed by any local development as they walk slowly across the road in front of my car or mess in my yard each year. And finally, the Polar Bears. It seems there are about 10,000 of them left. In fact there are more healthy and mean Polar Bears living today, eating those caribou, than have lived in the last fifty years. We feed them well.

There is enough oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to replace all the oil exported from Iraq for 58 years. Iraq has the second largest known oil pool in the world. That alone is enough to justify oil production from this area.