Exploration Vs. Wildlife

No one was shocked when Secretary of the Interior Donald P. Hodel proposed to Congress that 1.5 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska be leased to oil companies for oil and gas exploration and development. Hodel has been Interior secretary for two years, but he acts as if he were still running the Energy Department.

The only surprise was the extent to which his report ignored the wilderness value of the unspoiled Arctic plain and the extent to which he claimed that national security hinges on the ability to wring every last drop of oil from the refuge. The only people who may have a reasonable idea of the oil potential of the area are not telling. They are the handful of oilmen who know the results of a 14,500-foot-deep test well drilled on native land in the midst of the wildlife refuge about 100 miles east of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay field. There is said to be a definite gleam in their eyes.

The results of the test well drilled near the native village of Kaktovik fall into the realm of “proprietary information.” This means that it is the oil companies’ secret, not to be shared with the 250 million Americans who are custodians of the adjacent wildlife preserve. All that the oilmen will say is what Hodel mimics: The refuge may contain the nation’s last big onshore oil field.

Therein lies a major flaw in the nation’s current policy of leasing federal lands for oil and gas activity. It virtually always is an all-or-nothing proposition, with the oil boys deciding where to drill and when. All that the rest of us are told is that there may be a one-in-five chance that the Arctic refuge might yield anywhere from 600 million to 9.2 billion barrels of oil. There might be none, or there might be more.

Let it be said also that rhetoric from the other side of this battle often is not much more illuminating. Environmental groups claim that oil development will do grave damage to the Porcupine caribou herd that migrates into the Arctic plain to calve. They claim that the oil companies are willing to destroy one of the last great natural areas of the country for a quick buck.

So the battle is joined at high moral and emotional pitch, with Congress asked to decide between Hodel’s request to open up the refuge to leasing and the environmentalists’ demand that it be preserved as wilderness area.

The fight could be waged more intelligently if Hodel had not abdicated his responsibility as the nation’s chief environmental officer in making this recommendation. He rejected other options including limited leasing, further exploration and taking no action--that is, to allow the area to remain as a refuge with no drilling at this time.

Environmentalists have focused on the caribou. In response, Hodel’s report went to considerable lengths to argue that while oil development might have “major effects” on the caribou habitat, there would be no major adverse effects on the herd.

Hodel dismissed the wilderness value of the unique mountain-to-ocean ecosystem as unworthy of consideration, since there is so much wilderness in Alaska already. He carried this absurd argument to the extreme by saying that oil development “ultimately will be in the best interests of preserving the environmental values of the coastal plain.” But in the same statement he said that the effects of oil production would “include widespread, long-term changes in the wilderness character of the region.”

In fact, major oil production would create a new industrial complex on the Arctic plain with roads, pipelines, housing, an operations center, processing facilities, land disruption and air pollution. It would alter the environment for decades at least. The American people, acting through Congress, may ultimately decide that the oil is worth the sacrifice. But they should not be forced to make that decision on the basis of incomplete and misleading information from their own government.