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Issues: Wildlands

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Policy Reports and Analyses
In-depth information from NRDC's lawyers, scientists and analysts.

Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the world's last truly pristine wild places. It is also the oil industry's long-sought prize. NRDC's lawyers, scientists and analysts have for years been in the thick of the controversy over opening the Arctic Refuge to oil development, and continue to provide timely, fact-based reports and analyses that help decision makers cut through the rhetoric; they are collected here.

Drilling in the Arctic Refuge: The 2,000-Acre Footprint Myth
Proponents of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development continue to make the claim that oil could be extracted by drilling on a mere 2,000 acres of the refuge. Here are the facts that give the lie to this canard.

Drilling the Arctic Won't Create a Significant Number of Jobs
One big reason the House voted to allow oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge: The Teamsters union pushed hard for it. But the Teamsters made their case to lawmakers by citing an oil industry study that's been widely discredited over the last decade. This 2001 NRDC backgrounder details some of the major flaws in this study.

News: Oil and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Get informed and up-to-date about the controversy over opening Alaska's Arctic Refuge to oil development.

Arctic Refuge 101: Fact Sheets
Plain-language introductions to the refuge's extraordinary coastal plain, to big oil's impact in Prudhoe Bay and other North Slope areas, and to energy efficiency's advantages over more drilling.

last revised 3.15.05