Big Oil and the Republicans in Congress are pushing again for invading the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They simply won't give up the fight to pollute the last pristine spot of wilderness on the continent.
And pollution is ultimately what it is all about. The largest oil spill attributable to inevitable decay of pipeline infrastructure occurred in the Prudhoe Bay area Caribou fields where oil leaked out of a pipe for almost a week before even being discovered. 267,000 gallons of crude are soaking into the permaforst while cleanup crews try to vacuum it up in below zero temperatures. See this New York Times story. This--after everyone assured us that the North Slope production was safe and we didn't need to worry about a thing as far as environmental harms if we opened up the Wildlife Refuge. The company's spokesperson admitted that they had seen increasing corrosion in the pipe at the leak, but (like all the slip-ups in these days of the Bush Administration's "I can do no wrong" approach) they say that "We had no reason to expect" that this pipe" was going to leak."
Let's hope that Congress is paying close attention to this spill. It certainly provides one more reason for refusing to open up any more of the area for oil exploration and extraction. If oil companies were unable to spot this leak coming, they will be unable to spot other leaks. Any leak is disastrous, but some could well be fatal to the wilderness.
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