Opening ANWR to Development Could Lead to 'Exxon Valdez' Type of Disaster

Opening ANWR to Dev. Could Lead To Disaster
Thursday, 21 April 2005, 1:01 pm
Opinion: Jason Leopold

Opening ANWR to Development Could Lead to 'Exxon Valdez' Type of Disaster, Activist Claims

By Jason LeopoldIt's true that thousands of caribou and other types of wildlife will be displaced if Washington D.C. lawmakers pass a measure to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But there's an even bigger issue floating under the radar: the very real possibility of an environmental tragedy that could be as catastrophic as the 1989 oil spill caused by the Exxon Valdez oil tanker if swift measures aren't taken to address severe safety and maintenance issues plaguing drilling operations in nearby Prudhoe Bay-North America's biggest oil field, 60 miles west of ANWR-and other areas on Alaska's North Slope.

That's just one of many alarming claims that employees working for BP, the parent of BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., the Anchorage company that runs the 24-year-old Prudhoe Bay on behalf of Phillips Alaska Inc., Exxon Mobil and other oil companies, have made over the years as a way of drawing attention to the dozens of oil spills-three of which occurred between March and April alone-that could boil over and happen at ANWR if BP continues to neglect safety issues and the area is opened up to further oil and gas exploration.

Now, as President Bush renews his calls for opening up ANWR to development, some of those very same BP employees are blowing the whistle on their company yet again and are turning to the one person who helped them expose oil companies' cover ups on Alaska's North Slope.

Chuck Hamel, an Alexandria, Va., oil industry watchdog has been leading the fight for the past 15 years against corporations' BP, Conoco Phillips and ExxonMobil shoddy crude oil operations in Alaska. The safety and maintenance issues that Hamel and the BP whistleblowers brought to the attention of Congress and the public four years ago were supposed to be addressed by the oil company. Back in the 1980s, Hamel was the first person to expose weak pollution laws at the Valdez tanker port and electrical and maintenance problems with the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
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http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0504/S00206.htm

You know there will be spills and contamination of the environment, it is just a matter of when and how big.

thats if they dont sell it all to china or Japan. this idea is truly the stupidest thing i have ever heard besides invading Iraq.

issues?