Any company attempting to turn the most hostile drilling environment on Earth into an oil patch instantly puts in peril everything that makes the Arctic so unique. An oil spill could devastate endangered species like polar bears and bowhead whales, destroy habitat for millions of migratory birds, and jeopardize the subsistence-based Inupiat culture.

Ever since BP spilled 4 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, it has struggled to mop up the environmental and economic disaster that ensued. With year-round warm water, relatively calm weather, abundant daylight, and close proximity to one of the world's densest concentrations of oil industry infrastructure, the Gulf affords luxuries that don't exist in the Arctic.

It's another world up there. Arctic weather is even nastier than the weather at the site of the Kulluk's grounding. Gales howl across the Arctic Ocean. Total darkness envelops it half the year. Ice floes lock in the entire region six months a year, making navigation almost impossible. (The USCG has only a few icebreaker-class vessels in its entire fleet.)

And this unforgiving ocean wilderness is located more than 1,000 miles from the nearest Coast Guard base.

In the event of a spill – which, given the oil industry's 100-year track record, is practically certain – the Arctic's extreme environment would render containment measures useless.

According to a study commissioned by Canada's National Energy Board and based on 20 years of Beaufort Sea data, three of the most widely-used oil spill containment methods – burning spilled oil in-situ, deploying booms and skimmers, and aerial application of dispersants – would be impossible due to bad weather or sea ice 20-84 percent of the brief, June-to-November open-water season.