Oil Development and Endangered Whales Collide in Russian Far East

Sakhalin Energy has completed the installation of its third and final oil and gas production platform off Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. Company officials were jubilant at completion on July 5, but whale conservationists warn that some of the world’s most endangered whales have been driven off their feeding grounds by the construction noise, contrary to an agreement with the company.

An independent panel of scientists established by the IUCN-World Conservation Union today backed concerns expressed by WWF Russia and other environmental groups about the severe impact that high noise levels are having on western gray whales.
Sakhalin Energy, a consortium that includes Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, is working on the Sakhalin II oil and gas development in the Sea of Okhotsk, northeast of Sakhalin Island.

The same waters off Sakhalin Island are the only known feeding ground for the western gray whales, which migrate between eastern Russia and southern China.

With about 120 animals and only 25 to 35 reproductive females, this whale population is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel, set up by IUCN in 2006, recommended in April that Sakhalin Energy adopt strict criteria for the management of noise from its construction activities.

This would require them to measure noise levels over a certain period of time and, if necessary, mitigate noise in the whales’ feeding area if such criteria were exceeded.

In response to these recommendations, Sakhalin Energy stated it was “not technically feasible to implement the proposed criteria” and added that 2007 construction work had been planned on criteria “successfully used in 2006.”

Today, in statement from the IUCN office in Geneva, the panel said, “The panel finds Sakhalin Energy’s apparent decision to reject the noise criteria proposed in April for the 2007 season extremely disappointing and potentially unsafe for the western gray whale population. It has received no new information from the company to justify its decision.”

Environment News Service