Okay, on the one side, putting on my engineering hat, yes, anyone who tells you that there will be no oil spilled during drilling, extraction, and transportation of oil from the North Slope is trying to sell you something, if not offering you a big bribe under the table to look the other direction. (I am assuming "you" are a Congresscritter.)
OIl exploration and extraction are dirty businesses. Guys aren't dressed in while tuxedos. Things leak, spatter, drip, seep, pool, and so forth. That's why you have maintenance crews, so that when things get messy, they can clean up and fix them. So, yes, expect some messiness if Shell goes ahead with this. So kudos to their honesty up front.
And that can be manageable. Nobody particularly likes living next to an oil rig, or a port, or a pipeline, but that doesn't mean it's not manageable and doable, if the risk are worth it for the overall gain. If the rest of the cost-benefit ratio applies.
And that's the problem, because these guys can't demonstrate that their cost/benefit ratio is where we want it to be, because they can't trustworthily demonstrate they have control over the risks. "No, it won't be something that impacts people's subsistence." Prove it. Demonstrate that the safety measures, and counter-measures, and plans, and backup plans, and contingency backup plans, will be sufficient.
All signs — from the testing that's been done to what we know of the Arctic to simple demonstrations like the BP disaster (and a zillion lesser disasters that take place annually with oil facilities around the world) — are that yes, there will be an impact on "people's subsistence" — and much more.
What we do know is that, internal to Shell's business, they think the cost/.benefit ratio looks pretty good. That may be because they know something about their safety record and abilities we don't, or because they are deluded, or because the safety guys want to look good and so minimize the risks, or the sales team wants to do the same … or because they realize that if they do a billion-zillion dollars worth of environmental damage, they won't have to pay up to anyone for years of litigation, and when they do it will be at pennies on the dollar of damage vs. what short-term profit they've been able to make here.
And, of course, it's not like if they start getting a large business investment there, with lots of rigs and pipelines and all that anyone will dare shut it down for too long. Too much money at stake. Too many jobs. Too much income to the state. Too much to trumpet about energy independence. In the face of the BP spill, Caribbean oil production just kept humming along, and even the deep-water exploration only suffered a temporary hiccup.
Shell won't promise anything to anyone, except to their investors. And those don't quote have the same priorities as the rest of us.
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Shell VP: Yeah, we’re gonna spill some oil in the Arctic
Shell’s Alaska vice president confirms spills will be part of its new, fraught drilling operations off the North Slope of Alaska. But it’s not a big deal or anything.
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