The growing demand for oil and gas has required their discovery in distant and uncharted natural landscapes. Are the benefits of oil and gas exploration in these areas worth the costs of destroying these sites?

The growing demand for oil and gas has required their discovery in distant and uncharted natural landscapes. Are the benefits of oil and gas exploration in these areas worth the costs of destroying these sites?

Few issues in modern energy policy demonstrate this conflict between economic necessity and environmental responsibility more starkly than the expansion of oil and gas exploration into previously pristine wilderness. The economic arguments for accessing these reserves are not without some validity, however I am confident the disadvantages of damaging our irreplaceable natural environments far outweighs that which their exploitation would deliver.

The case for more exploration beyond the immediate vicinity is mainly based on a mix of energy security and economic arguments. Industry proponents explain that the growth of global demand for oil and gas − especially from quickly-urbanising economies across Asia and Africa − is too strong to staunch without further investment in new reserves, arguing that this state will become increasingly vital if supply stability, moderating global energy prices, and economic disaster resulting from an energy shortfall are all to be avoided. Depending on how they are managed, royalties, jobs and infrastructure development arising from the extraction of these resources can be a powerful agent for national transformation in those countries; especially where regions have long been excluded from meaningful participation in national socio-economic development.

Some even argue that new technology, such as better directional drillings and facility design with a smaller footprint and better prevention of spills makes extraction operations much cleaner than previous generations of resource development (that also provoked the environmental catastrophes associated with past periods of frontier resource development).

But the downsides of accessing undisturbed and pristine natural landscapes are on an entirely different scale, and for me, economics do not begin to provide a defense. Unspoiled wild places contain biodiversity of exceptional scientific, ecological and intrinsic significance that is practically impossible to assign a commercial dollar value. Whether they are comprised of Arctic tundra, tropical rainforest, deep-sea ecosystems or high-altitude wilderness these environments in fact act as the final strongholds of species and ecological communities that have been displaced to progressively more remote areas by human activity within more accessible locations. The harm to them from industrial extraction — habitat fragmentation; noise and light pollution; chemical contamination; disruption of migratory patterns; the permanent scarring of landscapes by roads, pipelines, and facility construction — is not superficial but strikes at ecological systems that took millennia to evolve and cannot be restored on any timescale relevant to human decision-making.

Climate dimension is also extremely well proven. Scientific consensus on the urgent need for rapid decarbonisation may be clearer now than ever, but investing billions of dollars and political capital into exploring new fossil fuel deposits in remote wilderness areas contradicts the energy transition demanded by global climate commitments. Not only can the carbon in clearly identified proven reserves not be burnt without exceeding internationally agreed temperature targets, but adding reserves is both locally environmentally costly and globally counterproductive at precisely the moment it matters.

In addition, as costs for renewable energy fall at an unprecedented pace, economic case for frontier fossil fuel development becomes increasingly unstainable. Solar and wind are cost-competitive with or cheaper than new fossil fuel development over a large swathe of the global energy market, and further renewable capacity investment shapes up as an economically much sounder long-term strategy than locking in the infrastructure and political commitments that will accompany frontier oil and gas hubs– especially when many countries are moving toward decarbonisation policies that drive increases in stranded assets behaviour.

In summary, the economic and energy security case for an expansion of oil and gas exploration into undeveloped natural areas may appear superficially plausible, but rests on assumptions concerning energy futures and environmental replaceability which are increasingly challenging to legitimize. This contributes to unique and irreplaceable ecological changes, and there are compelling climate or economic rationales for transitioning — much less developing further — resources that rely on non-renewables in the energy landscape; therefore, I believe the cons of this exploration outweighs its pros powerfully and definitively.