Also last month, a USGS contract worker, Ian Thomas, was fired for posting a map on a government Web site of calving areas on the coastal plain for the enormous Porcupine caribou herd. Officials said the map was outdated. In Alaska, where university research is partially funded by oil money, even wildlife biologists say they cannot afford to categorically oppose drilling. If they could come into it from the side, I think you would see a lot of the scientific objections disappear. BP's Chappell doesn't sugarcoat it.
Oil production means huge drills chewing through the Earth.
Slurries of mud and seawater are pumped down the hole at high pressure. Pipe and electrical transmission lines branch for hundreds of miles. But today's oil production is neater, faster and cleaner than that of 20 years ago. Ice roads carry heavy equipment across the fragile tundra, then melt in summer. Computers guide drills inch by inch for 7 miles through pipe as flexible as a hollow reed.