Big Miracle by Tom Rose Page A

and harsh. So, too, did Alaskans; which is why many of them loved it. Nearly as many Alaskans had private pilot licenses as they did driving licenses. Still more lived quite happily—so they said—without plumbing or electricity. It was the rugged spirit of adventure that drew many to the Last Frontier; economic opportunity drew more.
    But of all the adjectives used over the centuries to describe America’s “last frontier,” the one that has kept most of its relevance over that time is remote.” The state had only one major road, the two-lane George Parks Highway connecting Anchorage and Fairbanks, which was regularly closed in winter, a nine-month season in Alaska. Half the state’s population lived outside those two cities, meaning the only way they could get around was by air, sea, or dogsled. In an age of space shuttles and instant satellite communications, Alaska still remained remarkably uncharted. In 1988, less than one-twentieth of 1 percent of Alaska’s magnificent terrain had ever even been visited.
    For the rest of the country, Alaska meant cold and ice, and for good reason. Outsiders knew Alaska was big, but few had any idea of how big or how remote it really was. Outsiders knew that Alaska was home to exotic creatures like polar bears and moose, but few understood both the fragility and resiliency of its magnificent ecosystem until the infamous March 1989 spill of the Exxon Valdez that devastated southeastern Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Fortunately, the dire predictions of the most alarmist of environmentalists did not come to pass. The most studied environmental disaster of all time revealed that species were not wiped out; that the biologically diverse Prince William Sound did not become a dead zone. The region, thought to be so fragile, in fact revealed itself to be remarkably resilient. It recovered far faster and much more vibrantly than anyone thought possible—not that disgorging half a million gallons of tar-thick crude oil in a sensitive and isolated marine rich environment is ever recommended.
    But in a very real sense, it was environmental activism that caused the Exxon Valdez disaster. If it were up to the oil industry, there never would have been a ship called the Exxon Valdez in the first place. The oil industry wants to transport their crude by pipeline where and whenever possible because pipelines are cheaper, safer, and much easier to control. A consortium of Alaska drillers wanted to extend the Trans-Alaska Pipeline across Canada and down into the Lower 48. They were prevented from doing so by opponents who said that a pipeline would be too environmentally destructive. But as everyone found out in 1989 (and forgot quickly thereafter), supertankers are much more environmentally dangerous and disruptive than overland pipelines. Oil spills on land are infinitely easier to stop, contain, and clean up than those at sea.
    Similar points were made following the 2010 deadly blowout of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Why are companies like BP risking billions of dollars to drill so far out to sea and in waters so deep? Because environmentalists have succeeded in locking up available and accessible oil resources closer to shore not to mention dry land. Surely the oil companies would prefer to spend fifteen dollars to extract a barrel for oil in shallow waters, not to mention five dollars per barrel it costs on land, rather than the seventy dollars or more it costs to extract each barrel from deepwater wells.
    If the BP disaster was caused by America’s increasing reliance on foreign oil, then why have we locked up our domestic oil resources on land and in shallow waters in the Lower 48 and Alaska? The world’s largest known oil shale deposit, the Green River Formation, lies under huge swaths of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. It is estimated to hold an astonishing 1.8 trillion barrels of recoverable oil; every drop of which is off