Word: slopes
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...harsh but strangely lovely land, home mainly to the grizzly, polar bear, wolverine, caribou, fox, Dall sheep and countless geese and ducks. Mushy and mosquito-plagued in summer, the North Slope area of Alaska is so cold in winter that metals become brittle and men work at a fraction of their normal efficiency. Yet, during the past year, a 140-mile-wide strip of this inhospitable country bordering the Beaufort Sea was the scene of frantic activity as more than a dozen big oil companies conducted seismic tests and drilled exploratory holes in preparation for Alaska's "Great...
...their understandable haste to obtain geological data before the bidding began, some of the oil companies scarred the tundra with seismic ditches that look from above like giant graffiti and littered it with garbage and empty barrels. Once full-scale exploitation of oil begins, the effects on the North Slope could become disastrous...
...soil thaws a foot deep. But if the ground is gouged by heavy equipment, the permafrost is exposed. When it thaws, it turns into a small rivulet that continues to erode its banks, growing ever larger over the years. The permafrost also makes waste disposal difficult. In their North Slope operations to date, oil companies have bulldozed shallow lagoons into which they have dumped garbage and sewage. If they continue this practice, increasing amounts of wastes will seep through the spongy tundra and contaminate the whole water table...
...land. Instead of using trucks to transport equipment, for example, Atlantic Richfield Co. lifted rigs over the fragile country with giant Sikorsky Skycrane helicopters. For its part, the Federal Government says it will enforce water-quality standards in the area. Because it owns vast amounts of the North Slope as yet unopened to oil exploration, the Government is in a position to insist upon whatever guidelines it can devise to control development and minimize damage to the Arctic ecology...
...Northwest Passage could provide the answer. If the Manhattan's journey is a success, the way would be open to haul North Slope crude to the U.S. for 60? a barrel less than the cost of piping the oil from Prudhoe Bay to the ice-free southern Alaska port of Valdez for shipment to the Pacific Coast. This would not only make North Slope drilling practical and profitable, but would encourage development of Alaska's huge deposits of iron, sulfur, copper and other minerals. The Manhattan expedition could provide other benefits as well. By opening up the Northwest...