Okay, Bert, tell you what.

We'll bring in the loud, smelly trucks, build a road, bring in the drills and drill and oil well in your back yard. While construction is going on, some people are going to camp out there, and occassionally folks are gonna fly in on helicopters in the middle of the night.

Will you be disturbed?

Of course you will. Most people won't have sex with the curtains open, and it seems silly to think the mating habits of species aren't going to affected by construction going on in their bedroom. Or that feeding habits aren't going to be affected by the smell of gas fumes in the kitchen.

We're talking about decade of exploratory drilling and development to get to the oil. When you are dealing with species with a lifespan of that or shorter than that, the environmental impact can be devastating.

If we could just send a guy out with a divining rod and quietly put a safe, clean and efficient drill out in the middle of no where -- which is the image you are conjuring -- then the damage would probably be insignificant. But oil exploration isn't neat and clean and quiet -- the environmental wreck of Texas is a good example -- even if some of the drills you see (those are drills than haven't found oil by the way -- we had 'em in the middle of the city in LA when I lived there) are.