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Key Words petroleum, environmental justice, energy policy, health impacts
Abstract This review presents existing data and research on the global distribution of the impacts of oil production and consumption. The review describes and analyzes the environmental, social, and health impacts of oil extraction, transport, refining, and consumption, with a particular focus on the distribution of these burdens among socioeconomic and ethnic groups, communities, countries, and ecosystems. An environmental justice framework is used to analyze the processes influencing the distribution of harmful effects from oil production and use. A critical evaluation of current research and recommendations for future data collection and analysis on the distributional and procedural impacts of oil production and consumption conclude the review.
I. INTRODUCTION
The National Energy Policy of the United States asserts that the country currently "faces the most serious energy shortage since the oil embargoes of the 1970s," which has been precipitated by "a fundamental imbalance between supply and demand" (1). The National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), the panel convened by Vice-President Dick Cheney to develop the national energy policy, argues this crisis is driven by declining reserves in the United States and by "overly burdensome" and "often excessive and redundant" regulations that hinder new exploration and production of oil.
This panel asserts that the answer to today's oil problems lies in supporting more domestic oil exploration, increasing access to overseas oil, and developing more refining capacity in the United States. The NEPDG thus calls for (a) streamlined and more flexible regulation of oil exploration, production, and refining and (b) the opening of oil exploration in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the Outer Continental Shelf coastal regions, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; it further recommends "an Executive Order to rationalize permitting for energy production ... to expedite permits and other federal actions necessary for energy-related project approvals" (2).
President Bush has made this one of his top policy priorities, arguing that "It is in our nation's national interest that we develop more energy supplies at home" (3). Vice-President Cheney has added, "One of the things we need to do is to build more refineries" (4).
The administration is thus advancing energy policies that will significantly increase oil production and refining in the United States and that facilitate...