The search for oil and gas takes humankind to some of the farthest reaches of the globe, and there are times when the search may take them into areas that are more controversial than dangerous.
That thought arose last week when five industry groups launched a suit against the US Department of Interior over a rule designed to protect the polar bear.
The groups representing the oil and gas, mining, and manufacturing industries say the rule discriminates against business activities in Alaska that might harm the bear, recently designated as a threatened species.
API sues DOI
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington, DC, by the American Petroleum Institute, the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Mining Association, and the American Iron & Steel Institute.
The five groups want a federal judge to block government plans to review projects in Alaska that might harm the polar bear by contributing to global warming.
The timing of the industrialists’ lawsuit could not have been worse, coinciding as it did with reports that nine polar bears were lost in the Arctic Sea and faced with an impossible 640-km swim back to shore because of global warming.
The bears plunged into the sea after the ice floe where they lived melted, and although land was only 100 km away, their homing instinct sent them north towards the ever-shrinking polar ice cap.
Experts with the World Wide Fund for Nature feared that the nine bears, despite being strong swimmers, wouldn’t make it back to land on their own.
“The Arctic is a vast ocean and to find nine bears swimming in one area is extremely worrying because it means that dozens more are probably in the same predicament,” said Margaret Williams, the director of WWF’s Alaska office.
USCG to the rescue?
Williams said animal groups were considering asking the US government to send a US Coast Guard ship to rescue some of the bears because they just might not make it on their own.
“As climate change continues to dramatically disrupt the Arctic, polar bears and their cubs are being forced to swim longer distances to find food and habitat,” Williams said.
Professor Richard Steiner, of the University of Alaska’s Marine Advisory Program, said the plight of these nine polar bears is an omen of worse to come.
“The bottom line here is that polar bears need sea ice, sea ice is decaying because of the greenhouse effect, and the bears are in very serious trouble,” he said.
Trouble of that sort is the last thing that any oil man or woman wants to be associated with, yet the industry is clearly on a collision course with environmentalists over the plight of polar bears.
While considering the bare necessities of exploration and production, the industry might do well to show a deeper concern for the bear necessities, too.
