Ecotrust in the News
DotEarth Blog - New York Times
September 8, 2009
By Andrew C. Revkin
Oil Fields and Arctic Ecology
Oil companies operating on Alaska’s Arctic coastal plain have substantially cleaned up their operations in the 40 years since the first drilling in Prudhoe Bay. The ability to drill in many directions from one spot on the surface has substantially reduced the footprint of pipelines and gravel pads and the like.
But one reality in Arctic Alaska is that almost nothing can be buried, so a spreading mesh-work of pipelines and supporting structures is still required to get fuel to markets. Another reality is that, even with the concentrated drilling, the infrastructure for extracting and moving oil now fragments 1,000 square miles of tundra. (To see how the maze of wells and pipelines has spread over the coastal region of the North Slope in four decades, ook at the sequence of maps, produced by Ecotrust.)
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