Located within the Department of the Interior, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) is an independent fact-finding agency that collects, monitors, analyzes, and provides scientific understanding about natural resource conditions, issues, and problems. Originally founded in an effort to map and survey the U.S. territories, today’s USGS program areas include biology, geography, geology, geospace and water. As a federal agency with a mandate for objective scientific study, the USGS often finds itself in the crossfire of political debates over global warming, nuclear waste and nature/wildlife conservation.
The USGS was established in 1879 through an appropriations bill, which included a brief section providing for a new agency, the United States Geological Survey, in the Department of the Interior. The new agency stemmed from a National Academy of Sciences report that Congress commissioned in 1878 to come up with a plan for surveying and mapping U.S. Territories. The Academy recommended that a pre-existing Coast and Geodetic Survey be transferred from the Treasury Department to the DOI, renamed “Coast and Interior,” take on additional responsibility for geodetic, topographic and land-parceling surveys—and that the USGS be established as an independent organization within the department to study geological structure and economic resources (Specifically, it was charged with “classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain.”)
Yucca Mountain
Three USGS scientists were involved in e-mail exchanges about falsifying documents on Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump project. Evidence of fabricated data surfaced in 2005, as the Department of Energy (DOE) was preparing its application for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to store more than 70 thousand tons of the most hazardous radioactive waste at the controversial site. Interested in Yucca Mountain since the late 1980s, the DOE had conducted extensive research of the site, and USGS was brought in to help determine its safety as a waste repository. The USGS employees in question, contracted hydrologists studying water flow through the mountain, falsified documents regarding water data during a quality assurance phase of the project from1998-2000. Water data are particularly important for determining viability of the site because safety depends on water levels inside the storage area—and how long it takes for water to filter from the mountain rock to the surrounding water bodies. The data in question were manipulated in favor of a positive safety rating for the DOE’s plans.
A 1996 study by Los Angeles National Laboratory in New Mexico had indicated that water takes only a few decades to flow through the mountain, raising concern that the waste storage containers could erode and leak nuclear waste into the water system. The DOE maintains that subsequent studies (including USGS models) have shown that water movement through the site is much slower, and therefore makes it safe for storage. In 1998, more than 200 public interest organizations petitioned the DOE to disqualify the site and “declare it unsuitable for further consideration as a high-level nuclear waste repository.” The petition was based in part on a finding of chlorine-36 at elevated levels deep inside the mountain, indicating a rapid water flow.
As reported by the press in April 2005, the DOE admitted that documents regarding the safety of water infiltration at Yucca Mountain had been fabricated. The e-mail scandal elicited FBI and DOI investigations, but no criminal charges, and was subsequently downplayed by the government. But the tainted body of work USGS had invested in the Yucca Mountain project called into question the scientific basis for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) license application, and the DOE invested an additional $13 million to redo the research. The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (an independent committee charged with assessing YM progress, which reports to Congress) subsequently reported that the second body of research was not nearly as sound as the work it replaced.
Declassification Committee
Censorship/Global Warming
Amid federal investigations into allegations that the Bush Administration attempted to muzzle government scientists with regard to global warming, the press reported a clampdown on the USGS in 2006.
2002 Caribou
In 2002 the USGS issued a warning that oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve would harm the Porcupine Caribou herd. One week later it issued a contradictory statement assuring that the Caribou would not be affected, eliciting criticism for the Bush Administration which is perceived to have pressured the agency in what many see as a routine compromise of scientific integrity.
Caribou study charges energy debate
(by Lisa M. Pinsker, Geo Times)
USGS Research/ Peak Oil Debate
In layman’s terms, “peak oil” is the point at which global petroleum reaches its maximum production rate - after which will follow an inevitable decline of the finite resource. The term was coined by M. King Hubbert, a U.S. geologist who first used the theory in 1956 to accurately predict that U.S. oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. According to Hubbert’s model, the production rate of an exhaustible resource will follow a bell-shaped curve based on limits of exploitability and external (market) pressures. Hubbert’s theory has given way to storm of debate over when and how global reserves will be exhausted—a debate that, though scientific, is also largely based on political and economic variables.
“Pessimists”
Many geologists argue the peak oil period is already happening, or will be within a few years - and that, once production peaks, prices will balloon and lead to economic (and social, environmental, political) Armageddon. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) is a prominent proponent of this argument.
“Optimists”
On the other side of the debate, many economists and political scientists believe that there will be a smooth transition to alternative fuel sources or increased investment in production that will rise to meet demand. The US Energy Information Agency, International Energy Agency and Cambridge Research Associates are prominent proponents of this school, and argue no peak is visible before 2030 - emphasizing the importance of socio-economic, political and technological forces over the doom of an inevitably diminishing natural supply.
Conservative groups tend to adopt a political outlook on the oil peak debate, debunking the impending crisis and arguing that supply will meet demand at reasonable prices for at least another generation. Focus among conservative groups tends to be more on neoliberal market reforms and the political regimes of countries with oil reserves - and how industrialized nations can exploit them. (See Reason Magazine article, below).
USGS
In 2000 the USGS World Petroleum Assessment 2000 gave peak-oil detractors something to celebrate: data indicating that the industry could discover another 650 billion barrels of oil - possibly in West Africa or the Artic - by the year 2025.
Long dismissed by proponents of the peak-oil theory, the USGS forecast has also fallen out of favor with the industry. Writing for the Guardian in October 2007, David Straham reported that industry experts at the very private Hedberg research conference the year before - organized by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and attended by tech experts from all the biggest companies and state-owned operations - challenged the USGS figures “on the basis of their companies” more detailed proprietary data. The consensus was that future oil discovery would total 250 billion barrels (about a third of the USGS figure).
Background
Resources for oil peak debate at Hubbert Peak
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Founded: 1879
Annual Budget: $968.5 million
Employees: 10,000
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U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
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Mark Myers earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in geology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his doctorate in geology from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in 1994, specializing in sedimentology, clastic depositional environments, surface and subsurface sequence analysis, and sandstone petrography. Myers is an expert on North Slope sedimentary and petroleum geology, and spent his career working as an exploration geologist for oil and gas in Alaska. He has worked as a survey chief for field programs in the MacKenzie Delta (ARCO, 1985), Cook Inlet (State of Alaska/U.S. Geological Survey, 1997), and North Slope (ARCO, 1999), as well as a sedimentologist for 13 other North Slope field programs. He has formerly served as a president and board member of the Alaska Geological Society; a certified professional geologist with the American Institute of Professional Geologists; a certified petroleum geologist with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists; and a licensed geologist with the State of Alaska. Myers was also an officer in the Air Force Reserve from 1977 to 2003, and retired as a Lt. Colonel.
Before being tapped by Bush to head the USGS in 2006, Myers headed Alaska’s geological survey and the oil and gas division of the state’s natural resources department. He is the first USGS who hasn’t come from either academia or from within the agency in fifty years. Some observers expressed concerned over the nomination of an “oilman” to run the USGS, fearing the agency’s scientific mission would be cowed to oil and gas interests. However, Myers was among seven top Alaskan officials who resigned from their posts in 2005 in protest of Governor Frank Murkowski’s (R) concessions to oil interest in negations over a natural-gas pipeline from the North Slope. According to press reports, in his resignation letter, Myers wrote that “staying in this position would require me to compromise my values as to what is right, both legally and ethically, and what is in the interests of the state.”
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