The Argument Against Oil Drilling in Arctic Seas

The Natural Resources Defense Council has issued a statement concluding that recent events — most notably the grounding of a Shell Oil drilling rig in Alaska — show the oil industry is not ready to safely, cleanly drill offshore in the Arctic.

I agree. There’s no logic for pushing fossil-fuel frontiers this extreme while neglecting energy-efficiency measures at home.

Here’s the group’s argument, which builds on its earlier, and justified, criticism of President Obama’s vague new “National Strategy for the Arctic Region”:

Last week the Coast Guard wrapped up a marine casualty investigation hearing in Anchorage that uncovered new details about Royal Dutch Shell’s reckless attempt to drill for oil in the wild and remote Arctic Ocean in 2012.

Though Shell’s debacles are plain to see, its experience also illustrates that even the best-prepared, best-equipped, and most technologically advanced oil company has no business drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean. Ever.

The panel, which is expected to release its findings sometime after July 5, heard witnesses describe, under oath, the events that forced Shell to cut loose its exploratory drilling rig, the Kulluk, from its towline, grounding it on pristine Sitkalidak Island on New Year’s Eve.

The panel heard about busted shackles lost at sea. Snapped towlines. Fuel injectors clogged with slime. Forty-foot seas. And harrowing rescue attempts by Coast Guard helicopters to pluck Kulluk crewmembers from a deck that pitched and rolled with each wave.

Shell’s Alaska operations manager even admitted the Kulluk left port in Dutch Harbor during the stormiest time of year to avoid paying state taxes, calling into question earlier statements from the same official.

The Arctic has shown us who’s boss – and that the oil industry is no match. America won’t ever achieve energy security by drilling in the least-secure place on Earth, so it’s time to drop the Arctic Ocean from our national energy strategy.

It’s a simple equation. 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.

Even one of the main dispersants BP used in the Gulf – Corexit – has recently been found to be more toxic than oil, leading to serious risk of lung damage.

The upcoming report will no doubt fault Shell for being ill-prepared for offshore drilling in Alaska. But the report is much more than an indictment of Shell’s incompetence. It will be one more piece of evidence that no matter how well-prepared or technologically advanced, no oil company will ever be able to operate safely in the Arctic’s extreme environment.

 

America won’t ever achieve energy security by drilling in the least-secure place on Earth, so it’s time to drop the Arctic Ocean from our national energy strategy.

The group has produced a helpful report on the environmental risks associated with oil development in the Arctic.

I’d be happy to host a discussion here involving representatives from the oil industry, administration and environmental groups on these questions.

NY Times