Putting a Positive Spin on Oil Exploration in the Arctic Refuge

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

Putting a Positive Spin on Oil Exploration in the Arctic Refuge

By Henry Fountain and Steve Eder
Aug. 21, 2019
Updated 8:44 a.m. ET

When the Trump administration first pushed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration, it predicted that drilling would generate a windfall for the federal Treasury: $1.8 billion, by a White House estimate.

But two years later, with the expected sale of the first oil and gas leases just months away, a New York Times analysis of prior lease sales suggests that the new activity may yield as little as $45 million over the next decade. Even the latest federal government estimate is half the figure the White House predicted.

The lofty original projection was just one element of a campaign within the administration to present in the best possible light the idea of opening the refuge’s coastal plain after decades of being stymied by Democrats and environmentalists, according to internal government communications and other documents reviewed by The Times.

-snip-

Even before plans to allow the lease sales were completed and approved by Congress in late 2017, the Interior Department pressed for new — and possibly rosier — assessments of the prospects for oil discoveries that would entail field research in the environmentally fragile refuge, according to the documents.

In revising a draft plan for the new assessments, officials played down evidence that the refuge might not have much oil, deleting references to disappointing wells nearby.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/oil-drilling-arctic.html

[Lulu KC]

1. interesting

So the positive spin is that there's probably not much there so the market will turn away, yawning. After 30 years of writing letters and lamenting about ANWR, this is not how I expected this movie to end.

But before they do, what happens to the caribou and native people while some are poking around and finding not much?

This led to another interesting article--https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/us/arctic-oil-drilling-well-data.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer.

Thanks for posting, Eugene.