Drilling in the Arctic, from The Guardian/Associated Press, at guardian.co.uk.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline has made the transport of oil from the Alaskan interior to the shipping ports of the coast immeasurably more simple. Unfortunately for oil companies, spills like that of the Exxon Valdez, or more recently the BP Gulf of Mexico spill, have raised concern regarding extracting oil from and transporting oil across the Arctic. While more oil companies are looking to the Arctic as a resource, governments and committees are questioning safety, as it is very difficult to reach those places where drilling would occur should there be an accident. Britain is one of those questioning the situation as part of the Arctic Council where they have observer status and are being asked to use their influence to increase drilling safeguards.

For more on the battle for the Arctic, please see:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19652326

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.