In fast-warming Alaskan village, fate of Biden’s climate policy could be decided
NUIQSUT, Alaska — On the fifth day of the gas leak, Bruce Nukapigak loaded 14 relatives into three cars and fled through a blizzard toward the nearest town of Deadhorse.
He passed his old caribou hunting campsite — now hemmed in by oil pipelines — and drove over the concrete bridge built by the energy giantConocoPhillips, where he used to set nets for salmon in an Arctic stream.
Nukapigak, a 37-year-old power-plant operator, took pride in the fact that his remote hometown at the top of the world helped supply the country’s energy. But he had lived through oil disasters before — his infant son was airlifted from the village during a blowout a decade earlier — and he knew a knife’s edge could separate routine work from catastrophe.
“I understand this country needs energy. And we provide it,” he said. “But all the bad stuff that comes with it — we’re left to fend for ourselves when it happens.”
Related Knowledge Center: Arctic energy development
The Arctic region of the United States has been both an important source of crude oil and the subject of unending political debate because of that oil.
The Prudhoe Bay oil field, along Alaska’s northern coast, for years accounted for about 20 percent of the nation’s oil production. Because of that production, the industry and its allies long have advocated exploration in the coastal plain of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, about 65 miles east of Prudhoe.