"The energy industry centered in Prudhoe Bay is the economic engine of the North Slope, helping preserve the Inupiat culture, but it also presents a potential threat to that culture. Mayor Edward Itta of the North Slope Borough e-mailed answers to our questions about these conflicts.

Q. How did the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April and yesterday’s explosion on a different gulf offshore platform change your thinking about the merits of offshore oil exploration in the Chukchi Sea?

A. Those two explosions in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t change my mind about offshore oil exploration. They just made me more worried. I’ve never thought it was a good idea to drill for oil and gas in an ocean where we’ve been coexisting with migrating bowhead whales and other marine mammals for thousands of years. But when both Republican and Democratic administrations in Washington favor drilling off this coast, we’ve got to get realistic. To me, that means recognizing that it’s probably going to happen, and then demanding a regulatory framework that will truly protect these waters.

I’ve got a list of very reasonable requirements to minimize the risks — things like doing baseline science before the drilling begins, so we can measure any changes as development proceeds. If you don’t have a baseline, how will you know if the ocean is being stressed as time goes on? We also need a Coast Guard presence up here. This is the only ocean that has no one watching over the ship traffic. Those are just two of our concerns. You see, this ocean is still a frontier, and I want to make sure we have the right precautions in place at the front end.

Q. Has the industry or the government demonstrated to your satisfaction that they would have adequate response capability in the event of spills or other accidents?

A. No. We need real-world demonstrations of oil spill response techniques, so we can see how well they work in ice-infested waters, or during the months of darkness we have up here."

Get the Story:
Green: A Voice From the Next Offshore Oil Frontier (The New York Times 9/5)