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Should the us drill for oil in alaska
Effects of oil drilling on the environment
Effects of oil drilling on the environment
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Drilling for oil in Alaska will cause the environment and animals to suffer. Oil drilling in Alaska started in 1980 when America found itself in an oil crisis. So a solution for this crisis was to start drilling for oil in other locations. The largest oil field in North America was in Prudhoe Bay on the north coast of Alaska. Prudhoe Bay would soon account for 20% of all domestic U.S. oil production. Despite the oil crisis in 1980, Congress formed a wildlife reserve just east of Prudhoe Bay. it was called The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge(ANWR). Document A.
THE ENVIRONMENT
America shouldn’t drill in Alaska for oil because it will affect the environment in a bad way. Drilling for oil will damage the environment in several ways. One way is by the vehicles coming in and out of the drilling area will cause erosion to the plants and trees so eventually they will die. Also the machinery used for the drilling can be very dangerous. So if an animal came along they don’t know what it is and not only could they cause harm to the animal it could also harm humans working there. Also with some machines causing smoke in the air will make pollution in the air. Document B.
PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT
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The environment needs protecting because even before the drilling started hunting was rapidly decreasing the amount of animals in the area. So if drilling occured in Alaska the animal count would go down even more. Drilling is gonna need space, and because Alaska is a mountained and woodland area they will have to make space by destroying trees etc. Destroying trees means destroying animals’ homes. According to document E ‘just look 60 miles west to Prudhoe bay- an oil complex that has turned 1,000 square miles of fragile tundra into a sprawling industrial zone containing, 1,500 miles of roads and pipes’. Also the document states that the would be
My opponents 1st/2nd/3rd contention was the drilling in the ANWR will harm the environment. This is absolutely incorrect. Lets put this into perspective, the ANWR is 19.6 million acres out of Alaska, which is 240 million acres. The proposed drilling in the coastal plain will be 1.5 million acres. Now, with the new technology we have today, we can tap into the 1.5 million acre oil supply with an oil area that is 2000 acres. 2000 acres is 1/10000 or .0001% of the ANWR. 1.5 million acres of oil and a minuscule possibility of harming at max, 1/10000, I repeat 1/10000th if the ANWR. (Arctic Power)
In conclusion, Oil impacted social change over time, which helped us grow as a society. If you took my proposal into consideration I would really appreciate it. My proposal is going to have all of the factors of Oil and how oil has change our state. After reading the documents that you have given me I was able to answer question “What story should be told”. As H.L hunt always said “money is just as way of keeping score”. - H.L
This paper will discuss the effects of Keystone XL Pipeline project and how the findings of the research might be beneficial to the United States. The first point of argument will be the negative impact of the Keystone Pipeline to America’s economy and the environment. The second point of view will be the positive impact of Keystone Pipeline to America’s economy. Keystone XL Pipeline is TransCanada’s tar-sand transportation project. The pipeline is supposed to cut across America to be linked with Canada’s tar-sand mines. It is aimed at increasing energy security in America. However, the project has received a lot of criticism from both the citizens and environmentalists for climate reasons (Mendelsohn and Dinar 154). To understand the implications of Keystone XL Pipeline, it is important to look at its environmental and economic impacts to the United States.
The debate on drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is an intensely debated topic of America today. Proponents of the oil drilling believe that the oil in the refuge will solve the high prices of gasoline, but they don’t even know what amount of oil the refuge holds and the amount of oil that we use every year in the United States. The drilling in ANWR will severely damage the wildlife refuge and its environment. The oil would take years to access with drilling and so far there has been no proof that the drilling would actually produce enough oil to sustain our needs as a country. Also a reason to not drill in the refuge is because the reserve is being saved for when our country is in a national emergency, or until when there is no oil left because of its rapid decline in availability. How did you feel when just about a year ago there was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? That event killed the environment in the Gulf and millions of innocent animals died to our screw up, if the drilling in ANWR is allowed we could be faced with these same exact circumstances again. These are the reasons that the oil drilling in the national refuge should not be allowed.
..."Alaska Oil Spill Fuels Concerns Over Arctic Wildlife, Future Drilling." National Geographic News. 20 Mar. 2006. Web. 3 July 2010.
Gasland is a documentary about a man who is offered money to sell his land for natural gas drilling companies and finds out that people are having problems where natural gas drilling companies are in place. In his journey, he finds out that people are having problems with their water supply, sometimes even far as to be enough to burn. After taking samples from the water, he finds out that it contains toxic chemicals. A proof came out when several fishes, birds and rabbits were found dead around the polluted water.
The environmental danger taken by offshore drilling is very straight forward, made clear by oil spills such as the recent BP oil spill and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 off the shore of Alaska. In the circumstances of the Exxon Valdez spill up to 250,000 sea birds died, over 2,800 sea otters and thousands of other animals], (figures from the BP oil spill are not yet concluded), having had a heavy strike on the regional wildlife and directing to a ban on all offshore drilling in America, until George Bush overturned it in 2008 to this repeal was a misjudgment because two years later there was the Deepwater Horizon spill. In this way, offshore drilling ruins ecosystems and fish supplies which creates a wasteland of a shoreline among southern USA.
Offshore Drilling is one of the main ways that that us as Americans get our oil. I believe that there are many different ways that we could get our oil. I feel that offshore drilling is cruel and destructive to such things as animals, coral reefs, people that have fishing charter boats. I truly love the ocean and everything that it has to offer, but if an offshore drilling rig happens to get a leak it would affect everything in the ocean, birds, and even people that make their living off of the ocean. If offshore drilling hurts so many things and the environment why do we still do it?
The people who are being asked permission to transform their land into drilling sites for natural gas have more reason to be concerned than most because it will affect them more directly than people who do not live in that specific area (although it does affect people who do not live in the vicinity as well). Although fracking may seem to concern to only a small group of people, it should also concern anyone who cares about doing what is safe for our country's citizens. The truth is, fracking is extremely dangerous, not only because of the negative effects on the environment, but also because it could make people ill.
In many cases around the world, our economy struggles so we look for ways to fix it in things such as environmental destruction. These things vary from oil drilling to freeway placement. Things such as these are beneficial to the economy by bringing in more cash for the community or region. Yet as we increase our economic value, the environment around us decreases. An example for this issue would be drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Now the idea behind this is that the Republicans have been trying for so long to be able to drill on this sacred land. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been said to be the most pristine areas in the entire United States. The supporters of this drilling have said that by drilling in this place, the oil
In the U.S today, many oil companies are fracking, or drilling holes for oil, on our precious land. In the United States, the midwest is where most of the fracking is coming from. The fracking has made the diversity of the local wildlife slim. Many things can be done to improve the environment to help with fracking. Fracking causes our environment to change in bad ways, we have to help stop or lessen it.
Drilling for oil in Alaska may affect the wildlife, but it is a good thing to do because our government well make money and get out of depth. Are you tired of paying high gas prices every time you got to fill the tank? Do you know if the U.S would let shell oil company drill for oil in Alaska you could kiss those high gas prices good byes? The resin they say we cannot drill there is because it would affect the wild life. But in my view the wild life that lives there has plenty of land to move to once they started to drill.
According to an online article from Thought Company, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill polluted the waters of Prince William Sound, coated more than a thousand miles of pristine coastline and killed hundreds of thousands of birds, fish, and animals. This crisis has become a symbol of human-caused environmental disasters all over the world. Many years after the accident, and despite billions of dollars spent on cleanup efforts, crude oil can still be found under the rocks and sand on the beaches of southwest Alaska, and the effects of the spill are still apparent in the lasting damage done to many native species. (West, 2017) This specific incident was a major crisis that acted as a prodrome for the oil industry. For the purpose of this assignment it is important that we take a look at the details of this event. From there, we will look at how Exxon handled the
PURPOSE (state specific purpose, relate topic to audience and establish credibility): The cars we drive every day release toxic exhaust gases into the atmosphere that damage it. We should try to do better to reverse these effects now; otherwise, our world will continue to get filthier and eventually become uninhabitable.