FEATURE - Alaska's Kenai experience shades debate on Arctic oil
Date: 12-Nov-02
Country: USA
Author: Yereth Rosen
Brown bears prowl the woods while canoeists float the river each summer to see some of Alaska's most cherished wilderness.
And nestled in the trees of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge are rigs pulling crude oil and natural gas from the earth.
President George W. Bush's plan for oil drilling in another Alaskan refuge - the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) - is so controversial that it has stalled action on national energy legislation.
But here in the lake-dotted lowlands of Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, outside the political spotlight, oil wells have been in business since the 1950s.
To those who want to drill in the Arctic refuge, the Kenai experience shows that oil development can co-exist with nature.
Just ask Doc Helton, facility foreman for the Swanson River oil field, operated by the Unocal corporation. He and his wife are the sole residents of oil employee housing in the refuge, where they share the terrain with all sorts of wild creatures.
"I love it. We've got coyotes in the yard and lynx," he said. "The northern lights out here are just fabulous in the winter."
But environmentalists say the Kenai is proof that oil rigs have no place in the Arctic refuge.
ANWR in northeastern Alaska holds a potential 16 billion barrels of oil - a volume equal to the amount of crude the United States imports from foreign countries for five years. The refuge is also home to polar bears, caribou and other wildlife, which has turned it into a rallying point for environmental opposition.
At Kenai, environmentalists point to a history of spills, a maze of leaky pipes and studies of pollution threats.
"I think you need look no further than the contaminants assessment done by biologists at the Fish and Wildlife Service," said Bob Shavelson, executive director of Cook Inlet Keeper, an environmental group based in nearby Homer.
The 123-page document, published in 2001 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, catalogues pollution and major accidents over the years. It is a "scathing indictment" of oil activity in the refuge, Shavelson said.
PARALLELS TO ARCTIC REFUGE
The amount of oil in the Kenai Refuge is minuscule compared to the billions of barrels of known North Slope reserves and potential Arctic refuge riches.
But some parallels to the Arctic refuge are obvious.
"The battle that's going on now over the Arctic refuge was fought here in the 1950s, and the refuge lost," said Jim Hall, the Kenai refuge's deputy manager.
The refuge has suffered, he said: "Any time you have an industrial activity in the middle of a national wildlife refuge, the potential for problems exists. There's no way you can mitigate around that."
While the remote Arctic refuge is seen by only a couple thousand people a year, the Kenai refuge is crowded by Alaskan standards.
A couple hours' drive south of Anchorage, the Kenai refuge logs about 533,000 "visitor days" a year, attracting about three-quarters of all the people who travel to Alaska's 16 national wildlife refuges.
Much of Alaska's population and a large percentage of the state's tourists drive by on a major highway. The Alaska expression "combat fishing" was coined to describe the mobs of summer anglers who stand shoulder-to-shoulder at the area's salmon-filled rivers.
Ironically, oil activity has in some ways enhanced recreation, Hall said.
Roads built by the oil companies are now used to reach campgrounds, hiking trails, a moose research centre and an outdoor educational centre, "none of which would be there if it hadn't been for the oil industry," he said.
Oil development covers only a small portion of the refuge, as would be the case in the Arctic refuge.
The 1.9 million-acre (768,000-hectare) Kenai refuge stretches from high-altitude ice fields to saltwater beaches. It holds rugged mountains, thick forests and fish-rich lakes. The oil and gas fields cover only about one percent of that.
In the 19 million-acre (7.7-million hectare)
