The Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge (ANWR):
Where Caribou Meet Oil
Conduits
(plus some coal pictures)
Above: USGS
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2003/fs01403/pipeline.html
Right: Fish and Wildlife Service
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2003/fs01403/pipeline.html
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Oil and gas aren’t quite as photogenic as
mountains or canyons. Here are a few
pictures from ANWR, and some shots
showing oil wells, coal mines, and the
occurrence of oil, gas and coal in the U.S.
You might want to know that, with
heating, plant turns to peat to lignite to
bituminous to anthracite, that western PA
has bituminous and eastern PA has
anthracite, and that making oil too hot
produces natural gas so western PA has
oil but eastern PA doesn’t.
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Photos from U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service; photo below
hosted on web site of Vermont
Senator Patrick Leahy
leahy.senate.gov/issues/
environment/caribou.gif
http://arctic.fws.gov/index.htm
The Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (above) and its caribou
(right).
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Satellite image showing
ANWR. To the north (top of
picture) sea ice floats in the
Beaufort Sea. Below, rivers
drain from snow-covered
mountains.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/frozen_
north.html
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
http://geology.usgs.gov/connectio
ns/blm/energy/o&g_assess.htm
Slightly fuzzy USGS map of oil (green), gas (red), and a lot of dry holes (gray) for the
U.S. Alaska is reduced to fit; ANWR is at the far north (top) of Alaska.
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
http://www.ice.gov/graphics/news/insideice/images/oilwell_lg.jpg
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/history/people/
pioneers.html
Historical photo of the world’s
first oil well, Drake Well
Museum, Titusville, PA.
Modern Pennsylvania oil well. This happens to
be a well that was seized by Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) of the U.S.
Government as part of investigation of drug
crimes.
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
http://energy.er.usgs.go
v/products/databases/U
SCoal/figure1.htm
USGS map of coal resources in the contiguous U.S. The numbers and blue lines refer to different coal
regions used in USGS studies. 1-3 on the far right are anthracite, 4-8 and 12-23 (shown in green and
blue) are bituminous (of various grades; greener colors are closer to lignite, and the red bits in 4 and 7
are close to anthracite), and regions 9-11shown in yellow and orange are lignite.
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1143/ USGS Circular 1143,
Coal—A Complex Natural Resource, above by J.C. Willett,
right R.W. Stanton, upper right P.D. Warwick, USGS.
Left: coal-fired Navajo power plant near Page, AZ. Upper right: Mining lignite-to-bituminous
coal, WY. Lower right: Scientific sampling of Lower Freeport Coal, Indiana County, PA.
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Slightly-low-resolution photos of peat from
Indonesia (upper left), lignite from Texas
(above; the darker beds are coal, lighter are
volcanic ash) and bituminous from West
Virginia (left; bituminous usually is
blacker, but has been weathered here).
http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1143/ USGS Circular
1143, Coal—A Complex Natural Resource, upper
left by S.G. Neuzil, left by C.B. Cecil, above by P.D.
Warwick, USGS.
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Above from Warwick, Peter D., in preparation, Geologic
Assessment of Coal in the Gulf Coastal Plain: U.S. Geological
Survey Professional Paper 1625E, CD-ROM.
http://energy.er.usgs.gov/NCRA/Gulf_Coast_B.htm
Left http://www.usbr.gov/history/dragline.jpg photograph
from Colorado, 1914, US Bureau of Reclamation.
Draglines (left and top center) often are used to remove unwanted rock above coal in surface
(“strip”) mines, such as the Gulf Coast lignite mine shown in the right-hand four pictures, where
volcanic-ash interbeds separate the coal beds, with a fossil palm leaf (upper right).
Unit 12 - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge