With the increased global demand in oil and gas, undiscovered areas of the world should be opened up to access more resources. To what extent do you agree?

With the rapid growth of population and industry nowadays, the need for greater availability of oil and gas is fundamental. Accordingly, exploring any new places for further resource exploitation is considered by some people as the best solution. However, I believe that opening more petroleum and gas extraction sites would bring more detriment for both environments and societies. Thus, this essay will elaborate the arguments for my disagreement over the aforementioned common thought. Firstly, petroleum industries are notably responsible for the environmental damage. The carbon-dioxide gas emitted during the production process will potentially aggravate the problem of global warming through its greenhouse gas effect. Likewise, not only will the poisonous pollution, as the by-product of extraction and refinement process, contaminate air, but also water and soil. The recent case of Deep-Water Horizon case may provide the illustration how dangerous the effect of this industry can cause to the ecology. During the tragedy, there was a huge oil-spill by off-shore petroleum rig which eventually contaminates thousand meters area of Gulf of Mexico. This resulted in deaths of thousands to millions of flora and fauna in that area. Therefore, the adverse impact the petroleum industries may result in the ecology should be considered seriously. In addition to the above, non-renewable energy industries also face the problem of sustainability. If all the available un-renewable resources are consumed today, in the foreseeable future, the reserves of petroleum beneath the earth will be depleted. Unless we stop the futile waste of such energy, the future generation will potentially cannot benefit it. This problem could be discernible, for instance, based on some research by geologists finding out that the supply of oil and gas will only last until 2071. In this respect, moving from dependency on non-renewable energy to the renewable one is crucial if we do care about the fate of future generation. To sum up, extensive exploration and exploitation of oil and gas would harm the ecology and future generations. Accordingly, we should start to find the alternative renewable resources to ensure its safety on the environment and its sustainability over the long periods.