The US Congress is again considering opening the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. The proposal threatens to violate the internationally recognized human rights to culture, subsistence, health, and religion of the Gwich’in people of northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada. Since time immemorial, the Gwich’in have relied physically, culturally and spiritually on the Porcupine Caribou Herd that calves each spring on the Coastal Plain.

In the push to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development, the big oil companies and their allies in the Congress, Administration, and Alaska state government say drilling on Alaska’s North Slope has been clean and environmentally benign. They profess a commitment to strict environmental regulation, and they assert that new technologies – particularly ice roads and directional drilling – will reduce even further any impact of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Proponents of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge opportunistically and incorrectly point to rising gasoline prices as a reason to drill for oil in one of America’s last wild places. If oil were discovered in commercial quantities, it would take 10 years before a single drop could be produced. Recent U.S. Energy Information Administration data indicates that in 2030, when oil discovered in the Arctic Refuge would be near peak production levels, the effect at the gas pump would be about two pennies per gallon.