Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

For the past thirty years Alaska has been a primary source of domestic oil. Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay and miles of coastline are marked by evidence of oil exploration and production, including oil derricks, gravel roads, and 850 miles of pipe that makes up the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. This drilling has already caused significant environmental destruction in the area; the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, considered one of the worst environmental disasters in history, dumped 11 million gallons of oil into the ocean. As a result of rising gas prices and foreign oil issues in the Middle East, there has been new interest in expanding the drilling in Alaska, specifically to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), part of the National Park System. Over the past twenty years, the question of whether or to open the ANWR to oil exploration has become a social problem due to the negative eco-impacts, and has brought increased attention to the American political agenda. Covering over nineteen million acres in the northeast corner of Alaska, the ANWR is the largest reserve in the National Wildlife Refuge. Because of its size, remote location, and the absence of any roads or campsites, it is also one of the wildest protected ecosystems in the