Oil and gas drillers in Alaska struggle to contain spills even as Trump looks to expand drilling in the pristine Arctic.
Credit: Bureau of Safety and Environment / Flickr

On Friday, as divers working for the oil and gas company Hilcorp finally plugged a leak in an underwater fuel line that has been releasing large amounts of methane gas into Alaska’s Cook Inlet for the past four months, workers reported another accident in a different part of the state. A blowout had occurred at an onshore oil well operated by BP near Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope, and untold volumes of oil and gas were spewing out.

Both accidents, along with an unrelated crude oil spill from a pipeline near a Hilcorp drilling platform in the Upper Cook Inlet on April 1, come as the Trump administration and the oil and gas industry prepare to expand offshore oil and gas drilling, including in the Arctic Ocean. The expansion raises concerns about oil spills in pristine, hard-to-reach areas off the Alaskan coast. Republicans in Congress are […]