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Floyd L. Davidson

wrote:
On Dec 2, 1:35 am, (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:
There are more than 400 toxic spills on the North Slope
*every* year. There have been several large oil spills,
some of which have been caused by willful negligence on
the part of operating companies.

And here we have it folks. A classic case of the alarmist
extremist.

You meant to say that you are in trouble because
somebody who actually knows something about this decided
to take you to task for the absurd statements you make.

Note there is no definition of what constitutes a "toxic
spill".

Actually, there is. There have been, since the late
1970's, more than 400 reported toxic spills *every*
year. The EPA of course defines exactly what must be
reported.

Today, when there is a vehicle accident on the highway and
gas or diesel fuel is released, it's considered a toxic spill. But
is it a big deal and environmental disaster? Of course not.

Correct. What's your point? As I said, there have been
more than 400 toxic spills reported at the Prudhoe Bay
Industrial Complex every year. That is true.

The Prudhoe Bay Industrial Complex is a superfund site!
The whole complex! (Actually, Kuparuk is listed as one
and Prudhoe Bay is listed as one, so the whole complex
is listed as two superfund sites.)

Now let's look at the facts behind this alarmist report intended to
scare. Sure sounds bad. But let's see what it takes to get on the
list of Superfund sites today. From the EPA description of Superfund
sites here are the two sites referenced above:

Except this does not describe the reasons for Kuparuk
and Prudhoe Bay being designated as Superfund sites, and
insinuating that it does is dishonesty on your part.

Prudhoe Bay-

On April 12th, 2005 BP discovered and reported a release of natural
....

Kuparuk-

On March 9th at 16:15 local time Conoc Philips operator of the Kuparuk
....

So, in the case of Prudhoe Bay, this big superfund site consists of a
discharge of natural gas and some light condensate mist on the surface
which was quickly caught by Arco and self-reporte to the EPA and

Arco didn't catch anything. Your above two statements
refer to BP and Conoco Phillips.

cleanup begun. It covered 53 acres, but considering it was light
airborne mist and easily cleaned up, it sure doesn't sound like a mega
disaster or what most people would think it would take to even be on a
superfund site list.

In the case of Kaparuk, a pipeline leak was discovered within 30 mins
of occurence and a whopping 375 sq ft of surface area was
contaminated. Again, the incident was promptly reported to the EPA.

Any reasonable assessment of this would conclude that:

That you are dishonest.

Those two particular incidents are but two of *many*
that have happened. Those incidents are not the reason
the two oil fields are rated as Superfund sites. The
designation existed prior to 2005.

1 - These 2 incidents are very small and had very minimal impact on
the Alaska environment.

Why did you bring them up? Why not talk about the
incidents that had maximal impact?

2 - They were quickly detected and further damage avoided. The
spills were promptly self-reported to the EPA and cleanup begun, which
show responsible and competent action by ARCO.

ARCO of course had nothing to do with it.

3 - Today, it doesn't take very much at all to qualify to be on the
Superfund list, but it is easy to then try to spin it into something
it isn't.

Then again, since you don't even know that ARCO
operations on the North Slope were sold to BP 7 years
ago, and *none* of your discussion involves ARCO, it
kind of opens up the question of just how grossly ill
informed are you?

Regardless of that BP in 2005, the same year you listed
that one incident, also was charged with failure to
report two spills. And Conoco-Phillips suffered a major
spill at Kuparuk where over 100,000 gallons were dumped.

In 2006 BP's pipelines suffered two major spills,
including the largest spill ever on the North Slope.
They were at one point also forced to shutdown 57 well
due to leaks reported by whistleblowers.

BP has in the past been fined millions and put on
probation for re-injecting toxic wastes into drill
holes, for safety violations, for improper maintenance,
and just about ever manner of risky behavior possible.

Indeed, once again just last week BP plead guilty and
was fined $20 million in criminal penalties for
negligence in last year's oil spills. They will be on
probation for 3 years.

Keep trying to tell us how safely the oil industry
works! When the Exxon Valdez hit a reef, the response
facility that was supposed to be in place was found to
be non-existent. No boats. When some nutcase shot a
hole in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, it took days to plug
it because the required by law device to stop the leak
did not exist. And the above negligence that went to
court included having discovered significant corrosion
in a feeder pipe in the 1990's, yet making no further
checks to determine the integrity of the pipe until they
burst.

So, far from being some big negative, these incidents are in fact a
demonstration of how responsibly ARCO has acted and how oil can be
extracted with minimal impact. If you compare these incidents to
the benefits of recovering oil from these areas, most reasonable
people would conclude the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Since you are both too ignorant to know that ARCO has
nothing to do with it, and dishonest in presenting
facts, why would anyone believe that your conclusions
are valid?

But, not the extremist environmentalists. Just imagine the same
scare tactics applied to other modern technology. Suppose the
airplane had just been invented. Can you imagine the scare
tactics?

Can you just imagine if we ran airlines the way we allow
oil companies to be operated?

Do you have any idea what is involved in just so much as
changing one rivet that holds down the skin on a
commercial airliner?

If we applied the same "scare tactics" to oil production
that we do to the air transportation industry, imagine
what that would be like!

Why, they could fall from the sky and kill everyone on
board. On the ground too. What about the impact to birds? They
will pollute and destroy the ozone layer. Yet, they fly every day.
Everyone including the kook environmentalists rides on them. Why?
Because the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Bottom line, get ANWR open!

Why? There are almost no benefits!

The idea that we can drill "responsibly" just anywhere
on the North Slope is patently ridiculous. That has
gone to court, and the courts have ruled that it has not
been shown to be true either for onshore or offshore
locations. ANWR is hardly the only sensitive area of
the North Slope.

Courts don't make policy.

They do arbitrate *facts* though. And the facts are not
what you claim.

At least they are not supposed to, but
more and more today some try to. Opening up ANWR is not up to a
court, it's up to Congress.

And Congress keeps voting against it...

That is a fact. It is not based on false premises, and
has been rather well demonstrated. The exact same
premises have been tried in court, in regard to the area
around Teshekpuk Lake, and proposed drilling was
stopped.

Everyone can take a good look at your alarmist reaction to the 2
superfund sites that you brought up and draw their own conclusions
about false premises.

Everyone can look at your discussion and easily
determine that you are both ignorant and dishonest.
Calling me an alarmist isn't helping your position
either.

Your argument is baseless. So far you have not cited
any specifics, and I challenge you to do so! I would be
happy to go into extreme details, and to provide
credible cites and references, to demonstrate what
actually is true!

I just did and smashed your whole house of cards. We're supposed to
take you seriously after claiming an oil spill covering 375 sq ft of
ground is a prime reason NOT to drill in ANWR? LOL

Except of course that is just a fabrication that you
made up. 200,000+ gallons of oil spilled due to
negligence is not exactly an insignificant event.

And in fact spills covering only 375 sq ft, when there
are more than 400 of them a year, are not insignificant
either.

ANWR presents *no* significant
opportunities for significant "energy development" or
"economic progress" on a national basis.

Yeah, environmental extremists like you have been saying that for
years. The truth is, we don't even know how much oil is in ANWR?

So you do admit that we don't actually have any reason
to expect any significant benefits.

Why? Because the EE's won't allow even limited test drilling to find
out. Based on what we do know, there's enough there that we should
be drilling right now. And the ultimate amounts could be huge.

We don't know that at all. For example, the State of
Alaska put up for bid 26 tracts of state owned and just
offshore of ANWR (within 3 miles, as farther out than
that it is Federal). Not one bid was placed. Yet in
other offshore bids in that offering there were more
bids, by a factor of two, than all previous Beaufort Sea
bids had ever received. You could get the idea that the
oil companies don't think there's any oil there at all!

Another way to judge this is that while ANWR is on the
east side of Prudhoe Bay, the National Petroleum Reserve
-- Alaska is on the west side. The USGS has done
similar resource studies on each, and says they have
about the same amount of oil.

We have been drilling holes in the NPR-A since the late
1940's. There are several known reservoirs. Yet there
is not one production well in the NPR-A.

Apply that to ANWR, and what it means is that we could
be searching there for the next 50 years and not find a
hole that produces enough oil to make it worth building
a pipeline to it. In fact, that is the *most* likely
scenario!

Another argument every time there is an energy shortage and price
spike from the EE's has been "If we start today, we won't have oil for
6 years"

Try 50 years, you'll be less annoyingly inaccurate in
your fantasies.

Well, if people stopped listening to extremists and started
6 years ago, we'd have it now. Is it an answer to all our energy
problems? No. Is it part of the solution? And is it enough supply
to bring the price down from $95/brl? Yes.

It is? Since when? If we found twice as much as the
highest claim, and found it all within 6 years... it
might add about 2% to the crude supply, and that could
even drop the price of a barrel by 1 dollar. That means
you might pay 8 cents less for a gallon of gasoline.

Of course that is the wildest pie in the sky estimate we
can come up with... and it still has insignificant
results!

It's your argument that is insignificant.

Sure sonny. Tell us more about how ARCO operates safely
on the North Slope?

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)