Panel Says U.S. Not Ready For Inevitable Arctic Oil Spill, no one has any idea how any spill cleanup techniques would work in the arctic environment.

As eagerness to explore the Arctic's oil and gas resources grows, the threat of a major Arctic oil spill looms ever larger—and the United States has a lot of work to do to prepare for that inevitability, a panel convened by the National Research Council (NRC) declares in a report released yesterday. The committee, made up of members of academia and industry, recommended beefing up forecasting systems for ocean and ice conditions, infrastructure for supply chains for people and equipment to respond, field research on the behavior of oil in the Arctic environment, and other strategies to prepare for a significant spill in the harsh conditions of the Arctic.

Shortest version: no one has any idea how any spill cleanup techniques would work in the arctic environment.

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