How could drilling a hole for oil kill any animals above the surface?

Question

wouldnt they run away?

Answer 1

yes they would run away.furthermore if your talking about anwar the equipment would have to be moved in midwinter for the ground to be hard enough for the transport trucks[no roads].so most animals would be hibernating or out on the ice.as to the spillage thats less than the average gas stations.all totaled the kill off should be less than the roadkill you pass on the way to work.or the kill off from the weather.and birds fly south in the winter.and are not stupid enough to fly into a big black spurt of oil,only liberals are.

Answer 2

The liberals say that looking at pump jacks and oil pipe lines causes cancer in animals.

And the above anti drilling answers are all wrong, they don't have a clue as to what they are talking about.

And heres another that the liberals don't want you to hear,  If the drilling starts now, we'll have cheap gasoline before this summer is over.  10 to 20 years is a liberal democrat lie by the lying liberals democrats telling it.  Like I said, they don't have a stinking clue.

Start calling your congressman and senators and tell them to drill now or get ready to find another job.

Answer 3

Quite simply it will not kill them unless they are panicked by the noise. I looked at the other answers and saw a lot of "book" knowledge. Not a jot of it right. I grew up in the oil fields of southern NM and the animals that were hurt were the cows who for some d**n fool reason would knock the safety fences apart and bed down in the path of the weights of the pump jack. They do not use pump jacks in Alaska.  Nor do they spill a few barrels of oil, not at 80 dollars a barrel much less at 140. As for the Caribou herds according to the Natives that hunt them for a living the herd populations are up by over 30 since the pipeline was built. So are most of the other animal populations because the pipeline supports provide additional shelter from major storms.

As an oilfield electrician, I have seen deer, pronghorn antelope, badgers, fox, coyote, rabbits, birds of all kinds, on well locations.

Answer 4

The oil drilling process involves moving large heavy equipment into place to do the drilling and then there is always a bit of oil spilled at the site, no stopping it, they always spill a few barrels in the process of getting the well in operation.  We are talking destruction of habitat and all sorts of damage.

Answer 5

It messes up their migration patterns and also the noise drives them away to unfamiliar land.

h**l, I knew that and I'm not even an environmentalist.

Unfortunately caribou don't have the anthropomorphic characteristics of living in less than favorable situations only to have it "annoy" them....... they will die instead.

Answer 6

It wouldn't be a direct link but the animal kingdom will suffer because they would have no home, in a sense. Or let's say a small insects population decreases enough to effect the bigger but still tiny mammal that eats it. Then that population will go down and it will continue up the food chain until a balance is reach and the outcome could be another one of mother earth's  creatures will be gone for no new generation to enjoy besides in the textbooks.

Answer 7

They want to drill in 2,000 acres out of 1.2 million acres.  It is a fraction of the land.  The animals will just go around the area at first, then most likely they will go through the area much like they do in the National Parks like Glacier and Yosemite.  How come a bunch of trucks and men going into he wilderness area for the sole purpose of getting oil disrupt the animals more than the millions and millions of cars and people that drive through the national parks.  I bet there are more pounds of trash thrown on the ground in the national parks in one year than all of the oil that could be spilled during the drilling process.

Answer 8

I assume you are talking about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The issue is the disruption caused by building roads and supporting infrastructure to drill the hole.  Yes, the animals will run away, and that's part of the problem; to where will they run?  And them running is disruptive.

Of course, there is also the potential for oil spills.

Answer 9

It's called enviormental impact, look it up.

Answer 10

We are talking about a very tiny area in a part of the country that perhaps a few hundred people in history will ever see. With modern technology, they can extract the oil with pretty low impact. This is a no-brainer, but has become a signature battle between groups.

Answer 11

The place they are drilling doesn't have a high population of animals.  The liberal democrats want you to think that we're destroying all kinds of beautiful lands, and all that, but the place that they are wanting to drill is practically barren land.  

With any kind of industry you run the risk of killing animals in the area.  That is called progress, and I guess if we want the gas prices to keep going up we can leave that land alone.  It's going to do us a lot of good when we're all paying $10 / gallon won't it? There are other places to drill, but I'm sure that if something had been done 10 years ago, we wouldn't be seeing gas prices this high, but hindsite is 20/20 isn't it.

Answer 12

Yea, the enviromaniacs are worried about the MUD SLUG. Up in ANWR proposed drilling site they found that the rare MUD SLUG lives there and are worried that drilling would disrupt its breeding cycle. They say say that this MUD SLUG is the foundation of the entire eco-system of the region. The MUD SLUG is dormant during the frozen winter time. Drilling would cause it to wake up and be confused and head towards the drill and get ground up. Or the big trucks and equipment would run over the MUD SLUG. They say that without the MUD SLUG the entire planet would be in a perilous journey to total destruction. They say the MUD SLUG has to be left alone up there. We can't drill because of the MUD SLUG. The MUD SLUG is more important.

Answer 13

I like caribu  they my friends.

Answer 14

if you hit oil ( and they do  want to hit oil) there is a gusher - a few minutes or hours where oil is spurting out of the ground, high into the ail.

Any birds the hits will lose the ability to fly, unless someone cleans them with detergent, gently.   some other animals, and especially fish, will be filled if they eat something with oil on it.

After the well is capped, lots of equipment comes in , to turn it into a pumping effective well. animals and food for animals will be ground into nothing by the trucks.

When it is fully running, it is very very  noisy. many animals will move away.