Now it's the New York Times gone wild, acting like that proverbial blogger in the basement making things up, as former and failed Republican vice-president candidate Sarah Palin still sometimes claims of the media in general.

 

"The Gray Lady," the national newspaper of record, or what used to be such, is headlining "BP Is Pursuing Alaska Drilling Some Call Risky." The drilling in question is the Liberty prospect, the most important drilling scheduled for this year in the Prudhoe Bay area, and the "some" are an unnamed "scientist" or two supposedly with the U.S. Minerals Management Service and an advocate for an environmental group.

 

Offshore drilling is shut down in the U.S. at the moment in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher disaster, the story notes, "but BP's project, called Liberty, has been exempted as regulators have granted it status as an 'onshore' project even though it is about three miles off the coast in the Beaufort Sea. The reason: It sits on an artificial island -- a 31-acre pile of gravel in about 22 feet of water -- built by BP."

That claim is maybe half right. The drill pad for Liberty is along the Endicott Causeway which extends three miles or so out into the Beaufort Sea north of Prudhoe Bay, but the satellite drilling island, as the Liberty site is called, is only about halfway along the causeway. And even though it's called an island, its attachment to the manmade gravel causeway really makes it part of a peninsula.

MMS, a federal agency with more than a few problems, has a strong case here for classifying this drill site as "onshore," if for no other reason than that you can drive to the drill pad.

The NYT doesn't seem to grasp much of this.

"Several companies have built artificial islands to drill offshore in the Arctic and elsewhere, in part because surging ice floes can destroy conventional floating or metal-legged offshore drilling platforms. Critics say that such islands are so tiny that a large oil spill will quickly flow into the surrounding waters," it says.

Again, it is about half right. North Slope Alaska operators have built artificial islands, and surging ice is part of the problem, but the bigger issue is cost. The water off the North Slope is shallow and gravel is cheap. It is easier to build a gravel island in four to 20 feet of water than to pay for the design of an expensive platform capable of dealing with ice. Such platforms do exist. They are in operation in the North Atlantic, where a certain ship called the "Titantic" was sunk by ice. No platforms have, as yet, been sunk.

As for the "spill (that) will quickly flow into the surrounding waters," BP doesn't start drilling until September. It won't hit any oil (look under 'Deepwater Horizon, relief well' for how long it takes to reach the goo) for months. By the time it does, the Liberty drill site will be surrounded by ice on which heavy equipment can be driven. If this one blows, BP can berm the oil up in a snow-banked reservoir, pump it out and haul it away.

Admittedly, this is the non-alarmist view, but in the wake of the Deepwater disaster, the alarmist view rules the day. Again the NYT:

"‘The whole process for approving Liberty was bizarre,' one of the federal scientists said. The scientists and other critics say they are worried about a replay of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico because the Liberty project involves a method of drilling called extended reach that experts say is more prone to the types of gas kicks that triggered the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon."

Who these unnamed scientists are and whether they know anything about geology and drilling is unknown. As for a replay of the "disaster in the Gulf of the Mexico," well, there are a couple facts worth noting here. First is BP's plan to punch two "injector wells" into the Liberty Prospect. It will use these to pump in water to force out oil.