In recent interviews with the Associated Press, both Republican U.S. Senate candidates – Dave Westlake and Ron Johnson – said they support drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), adding that drilling in ANWR would help avoid such catastrophes as the BP oil spill fouling the Gulf of Mexico. Both candidates noted drilling in ANWR would be safer because any spill would be immediately accessible to emergency crews, with Johnson adding the drilling can be done with minimal environmental impact.
Johnson noted, “ANWR may be environmentally sensitive but it may be easier to drill up there and with less environmental impact than trying to drill in very deep water,” while Westlake said the gulf oil spill is just one isolated incident that shouldn’t set back oil drilling efforts, noting, “History shows that we can do this safely. We’ve had one disaster, one terrible disaster. But everything else has been done successfully and safely for years.”
However, as Sen. Russ Feingold pointed out, history has shown that oil drilling is not as safe as Johnson and Westlake would have voters believe, pointing out that the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. “They want to pretend this is a fluke, that it can’t happen again,” he said. “Well, that’s a position they can take.”
Here’s some pictures of oil spill “flukes” in the past 20 or so years:
Clearly, drilling for oil – whether on land or offshore – has a minimal impact on the environment, as Dave Westlake and Ron Johnson have indicated and the pictures above demonstrate.
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