ConocoPhillips is dumb enough to drill in the dangerous Arctic, where extreme conditions and isolation make spills more likely and cleanup impossible.
Stop the next BP Deepwater Horizon or Exxon Valdez spills by telling ConocoPhillips to halt drilling in the Arctic.
Which oil company is dumb enough to go full speed ahead with its plans to drill in the Arctic?
Not Shell, who after spending 7 years and $5 billion dollars on Arctic exploration was forced to halt its 2013 plan to drill in the Arctic. A series of blunders and accidents including the grounding of its drill rig caused Shell to cancel its current plans to drill in the Arctic. Not French oil giant Total SA, whose CEO says that “energy companies should not drill for crude oil in Arctic waters because the environmental risks are too high”. Despite the failures and doubts of its rivals, ConocoPhillips is the oil company dumb enough to stick with its current plans to drill in the Arctic.
Tell ConocoPhillips to halt its Arctic drilling operations.
ConocoPhillips has pulled out of environmentally sensitive areas under public pressure before, dropping its plans to drill in the Amazon last year. Currently, the US Bureau of Energy and Management is reviewing ConocoPhillips' 2014 plan for the Chukchi Sea, the same Arctic sea Shell failed to drill at. Just last Thursday, the Bureau barred Shell from drilling in the Arctic after allowing it to drill in 2012.
Public pressure campaigns from groups like Greenpeace succeeded in spotlighting Shell’s safety blunders and halting its current plan to drill in the Arctic. SumOfUs.org members can build on the energy from environmental groups to stop oil companies from Arctic drilling by telling ConocoPhillips that it is smart business to abandon its plans in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea.
ConocoPhillips: stop drilling in the Arctic.
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill was catastrophic, but an oil spill in the Arctic would be far worse. The Arctic’s isolation from the rest of the world makes oil cleanup next to impossible. Its severe weather and unpredictable ice floes increase the likelihood of spills. Most dangerously, there is no proven method to cleanup oil spills in the Arctic’s extreme conditions.
ConocoPhillips’ proposed drill site is in a pristine and remote part of the world with no roads, airports, or hotels nearby to support cleanup efforts. Remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill? The inaccessibility of the Alaskan seas meant that it took crews many days to arrive while oil spread and destroyed ecosystems. ConocoPhillips plans to drill in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan northern coast where it is more isolated than the Exxon Valdez spill location. And don’t believe ConocoPhillips when it says there won’t be a spill, it just paid the Chinese hundreds of million dollars in fines for its oil spill in 2011.
The Exxon Valdez images I saw as an 8 year old boy are still fresh: volunteers scrubbing otters and ducks with soap only to watch animals die. 23 years later, the killer whale populations have still not recovered, and the huge schools of whirling herring that fed fishermen have not returned. I don’t want to see these tragic images again.
Oil companies: We don’t need another BP or Exxon Valdez spill. Stop Arctic Drilling!
Thanks for all you do,
Angus, Kaytee, and the team at SumOfUs.org
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Suggested Reading:
The Case Against Drilling in Alaska's Arctic Waters. Forbes. June 14th, 2012.