Interior Department Rolls Out First Rules For Arctic Drilling
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/20/interior-arctic-drilling-rules_n_6723974.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
The suggested rules are insanely reckless. The industry response is... I don't think there's even a word to describe a position that would willingly stake a few weeks profit against the likelihood of an epoch-changing event.
At first reading, the rules say that as long as there are resources on hand to cap a blowout in the same summer season as it happens, everything is peachy. The industry says that a capping stack on the primary well (I.e. the same safeguard that failed to contain the BP blowout) is all that is needed.
One can well imagine why the industry wouldn't want the first rule - it takes weeks to drill a relief well to cut off a blowout, and there's no way to keep a rig on-station in the presence of significant ice. In combination, this implies that in order to be safe the drilling season would have to end several weeks before the end of summer. With only, say, 12 ice-free weeks to work with, they would have four weeks to drill, four weeks to produce, and if all goes well, four weeks of safety buffer at the end of each summer.
Couple the above with having two rigs in the area instead of one, and it completely changes the economics of the thing. The proposal (which itself is fraught with danger) would allow maybe 2 weeks of production/rig/year. What the industry wants to do (a single rig relying on a welltop blowout-prevention stack for safety) would allow 8-10 weeks production/rig/year - but in the event of an accident which left the wellhead open, it would pretty much guarantee that oil would be gushing into the arctic ocean (and accumulating on the bottom surface of the ice) for the whole of the next winter.
The effect that this would have on the next and subsequent melt seasons is impossible to imagine. It seems entirely plausible though that it on its own could change the face of the planet.