Bryan Parras
Last spring, a small company called SAExploration applied for a permit to conduct seismic testing for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That would mean sending 90,000-pound "thumper trucks" into the Refuge’s sensitive coastal plain, threatening to run over denning polar bears and leave permanent scars on this pristine landscape.
Small companies like SAExploration usually fly under the radar, but this proposal would be so destructive to one of America’s last wild places that people across the country were quick to act.
It started with a letter from the Gwich’in Steering Committee, an organization representing the entire Gwich’in Nation of the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic who hold the coastal plain as sacred and essential to the survival of their people. Their letter to the company detailed their concerns about seismic testing in the coastal plain and urged SAExploration to reconsider their application. The Gwich’in were then joined by nearly 100,000 Sierra Club members and supporters sending letters to SAExploration. Along with our partners, we helped send in a total of more than 250,000 emails and phone calls to the company’s leadership team calling on them to withdraw their application.
After SAExploration shut down their phone line, we supported the Gwich’in and the Texas-based Society of Native Nations to hand-deliver 100,000 of those letters in person to their office in Houston.
Finally, facing a massive public backlash and the threat of litigation over the threat to polar bears, officials with the Department of the Interior said seismic testing couldn’t happen this winter, setting these plans back at least a year.
An Interior official has confirmed there will be no 3D seismic exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge this winter.
— KTOO (@KTOOpubmedia) February 7, 2019
(by @ElizHarball of @AKEnergyDesk) https://t.co/MxOKCiTVxz
SAExploration chairman Jeff Hastings finally took the hint and admitted defeat for now, but the company is still trying to keep the permit process moving. If they get their way, they could be doing their destructive testing in the coastal plain starting at the end of this year.
Whatever it takes, we’re not backing down in the fight to defend this sacred place, and we’re not going to stop until this company gets the message, once and for all, that the American people stand with the Gwich’in, and won’t stand for the destruction of the Arctic Refuge. Not now, and not ever.
Take action: The Bureau of Land Management is currently accepting public comments on their plan to allow drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Tell them you oppose these reckless plans.