The Future of East Hawaii

[Les C]

Kahunascott,

I would identify myself as a treehugger. I've heard that there's actually very little oil in the Alaska Nat'l Wildilfe Refuge, maybe ten years worth at our rate of usage. Hardly, a rresource worth destroying that habitat for. On one of my trips to Alaska, there was a meeting of major oil companies to figure out how they could harvest the natural gas that they had to pump back into the ground. It would need a different pipeline than the one used for oil. I suspect the interest in drilling in AK is more about the NG than the oil.

I do believe that it would destroy that habitat and the oil companies wouldn't be held accountable, reference what Exxon has gotten away with in the Prince William Sound. That area is now dead as a fishery, oil continues to cover the sea bottom. They've never really cleaned it up and have failed to adequately compensate the people of the area. I think we could expect more of the same it drilling continued.

I don't know about the details of geothermal, but I've heard that there are local environmental problems associated with that, too.

Les