No environmental impact?
Disclaimer: The views expressed below are solely the OPINION of myself and are based on my limited knowledge of things how they are. I do not profess to be an expert on the environment, the economy, oil drilling, corporate greed, or anything else mentioned below. These are merely my views as I see them. I feel the student in the article went a long way in trying to prevent (what I see as) a great injustice. I hope that whatever sentence is imposed on this man, that he will be pardoned or granted clemency by the next administration. But, alas, it is an imperfect world....
Everyone is a fan of saying that methods for getting oil are vastly improved, you can go in at an angle, etc....but one only need look at the recent Tennessee coal disaster to see how these things can go horribly wrong. I know it's coal, not oil, so it may be an apple and an orange, but all it takes is one accident, one careless screwup to see the same kind of disaster. And if a major incident occurred, it wouldn't be kept to just the leased lands. Look at the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the impact that had on the ecosystem there. Since no environmental surveys were really done, the government can't assess the potential impact the drilling would have. Also, keep in mind, there are "best practices" and there is the "cheap, easy way to do it." These rarely go hand in hand, and many businesses only care about the environment as long as it doesn't cost them any more money to do so.
There are better ways to do business. There shouldn't be a red-light special on public lands before Bush gets out of office. Any oil gotten from this area (even if you drilled the sh*t out of the entire area) would probably last our country a few months at best. The main thing is oil companies would be incurring very little overhead cost since they could refine oil that belongs to them without going through everyone else. Do they really need another 10$ billion in profits? Are they hurting so bad? Everyone wants to make it out like it's about "reducing our dependency on foreign oil." That's a joke. The only thing that will reduce it at all will be a viable alternative energy. But alternative energy needs money to research, and it doesn't pay for political campaigns.
We'll never have the capacity or the means to meet the incredible demand we've created for oil without external sources. When every mom driving to the grocery store is driving a massive SUV that gets 11 mpg, and Hummers are the cool kids car to drive, no wonder gas prices sky rocketed. And even when the crunch drove prices down, and large vehicle sales down, OPEC will cut production to try and increase demand and get those prices back up. If you think a few oil leases in the US are going to keep gas prices down, you're delusional. What it will do, is allow a select few to get rich quick, while potentially destroying some of the last great undeveloped land in our country.
