Is there any truth to this statement?

Kevin Drum writes

As Jared Diamond points out in Collapse, it's perfectly possible to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive ways, and the fact is that Prudhoe Bay has been relatively trouble free for such a large-scale operation.  ANWR is unlikely to be any more damaging to the environment than Prudhoe if it's done right, and it deserves to be on the table as part of a comprehensive energy deal.

And I don't mean whether Diamond actually said it but whether the statement is true, regardless of who said it: Is it "...perfectly possible to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive ways?" Is it realistically possible? Can oil be extracted in a way so "sensitive" that it is still profitable to drill? What in fact is the record of Prudhoe Bay? Kevin Drum is a very celver fellow, as is Jared Diamond. But are they well-informed on this issue?

Comments

[Kent]

There is a difference between the impact of accidents and the impact of development.

Jared Diamond is probably correct in that the oil industry knows how to extract oil in a safe and efficient manner with low risk of spills. That's what they are good at.

HOWEVER, as a former Alaska resident who has taken a hard critical look at the ANWR proposals over the years I would argue that there is a big tendency for drilling proponents to understate the impact of development in ANWR. To cite just one example. Drilling proponents frequently cite how few acres of the reserve would actually be impacted when they talk about the "footprint" of drilling. But what they are doing is actually converting the square footage of structures into acres. That is hardly a legitimate way to measure the footprint of drilling operations. When calculating the footprint of an urban area do you simply add up the square footage of the building foundations? Or do you draw a line around the developed area and consider all the land inside that area to be developed?

[Brian Miller]

Is Kevin Drum really a clever fellow when he is so consistently wrong on so many issues? Just curious :)

[Glen Raphael]

I'd say it is realistically possible if the land being drilled on is privately owned. But if the government owns the land and is merely allowing others to temporarily exploit it, the chance of responsible resource management is nil - it's a commons, and there will be tragedies. The best way to ensure environmental protection is for government to sell or give away the land, so the new landowner has a long-term ownership interest in maintaining its value to all future prospective buyers and arbitrating the differences between them.

As a positive example, the Nature Conservancy has sold oil drilling rights to properties it owns under the condition that pumping is only done during the months when the (migratory) birds aren't in the area or nesting.

As a negative example, consider the "chaining" of BLM land to create space for below-market cattle grazing:
http://fee.org/vnews.php?nid=2147&printable=Y

[David Sucher]

Glen,
We now have at least 100 years of big-time oil drilling to determine if what you say is accurate. Do you think that the truth of your assertion is demonstrated by the manner in which oil operators have taken care of owned land in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana? etc?

[Glen Raphael]

Beats me. Do you think it isn't? The relevant question is always "compared to what?" In this case, I think private owners tend to do a better job maintaining environmental values during logging, drilling, mining and so forth than do government owners like the BLM (or worse, the former soviet union). But if you're comparing it to some utopian ideal, a religious notion of "pristine wilderness", obviously it will fall short of that.

[David Sucher]

Honestly Glen, I have no idea. You made the statement -- now you seem to be backing off?

I assumed that you had some specifics to buttress your perspective that oil companies would take better care if they owned the land but it appears that you were only conjecturing about what might happen in the future. Yet there is 100 years of evidence to draw upon..a regular laboratory of behavior. If your assertion is true then there should be plenty of at least anecdotal evidence to support it.

[Glen Raphael]

There's a cool picture of caribou in Prudhoe Bay http://www.anwr.org/features/pdfs/caribou-facts.pdf>here. Before development, the chief concern was that it would hurt the herds, but the herds near the pipeline are actually doing fabulously well. Followup studies aren't considered newsworthy, so common knowledge on that sort of subject takes a long time to change if it ever does.

For relevant anecdotes I like the book _Free Market Environmentalism_ by Terry Anderson. Anecdotes aside, the economic incentives are pretty obvious. Political institutions are capable of greater environmental destruction than market institutions because they don't have to make a profit. Politicians don't own the long-term value of the land they manage, so they have a short-term incentive to mismanage it - to use it for short-term gain.

[David Sucher]

Glen,
It still seems to me that your last two & key sentences are all theory and conjecture and surmize but no facts. As to oil companies -- we have over hundred years of intense oil drilling -- surely there should be some emperical evidence to prove (or not) that private ownership somehow yields better land stewardship/lower environmental impact. I am sympathetic with your assertions but sympathy is not enough -- do you have facts?

I plan to visit Prudhoe Bay this summer to see for myself but even that will be only anecdotal of course as I am no scientist and we are talking science.

[Glen Raphael]

I withdraw the assertion. I did a little digging and can't find much evidence that oil exploration in the US has a worse history of environmental impact when done on government-owned land than on private land.

[Glen Raphael]

When you do visit, be sure to take more pictures than Goldberg did when he wrote this piece:

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/goldberg200503180758.asp

[David Sucher]

Thanks, Glen.