Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Forty foot waves.  60 mile-per-hour winds.  Freezing temperatures.  A fragile, pristine environment.  As if we needed another example of why drilling in the Arctic Ocean is a very bad idea, we sure got one when the Shell drilling ship Kulluk ran aground on Monday.

The problems began last Thursday, when the Kulluk, a conical Arctic drilling ship on its way to Seattle for repairs, broke away from its towing vessel and was set adrift.  Things only got worse from there:  The tow vessel, Aiviq, lost function in all four of its engines due to mechanical issues.  This is the vessel Shell heralded as a symbol of its commitment to doing things right in the Arctic. It is the vessel company president and CEO Gary Chouest described as “the world’s largest and most powerful anchor-handling icebreaker.”  It was designed to operate in minus-40 degrees and is apparently a state of the art vessel. And yet it could not keep control of Kulluk.  As winter seas continued to pummel the drill ship and its now two attendant tow vessels, the Coast Guard was called in to evacuate all of the Kulluk’s crew members.

But the Kulluk wasn’t just carrying crew members.  While the ship pitched up and down in the icy waters, about 150,000 gallons of fuel were sloshing around inside it, too, in the form of sulfur diesel, hydraulic fluid, and lube oil.  In effect, the Kulluk was an oil spill waiting to happen.

By Monday afternoon, the Kulluk was reattached to a repaired Aiviq and a new tow vessel, Alert. The ships were headed for safe port in Kodiak to weather the storm.  But the relentlessly rough water separated the Kulluk from the Aiviq, forcing the crew of the Alert to sever their line, as well.  Kulluk was adrift again, and this time, grounding was all but inevitable.  The ship ran aground around 9 pm on New Year’s Eve on a small island off the coast of Kodiak.

As of this writing, there have been no reports of leakage from the ship or oil sheen on the water.  But the event serves to remind us that drilling attempts in the Arctic will be costly and difficult at best and an environmental tragedy at worst.

Polar bears and other large mammals could suffer damage to their eyes, mouth, skin and lungs from petroleum exposure. Like bird feathers, polar bear fur loses its insulating and water-repelling properties when coated with oil.

This time, the Kodiak Coast Guard station was close enough to respond quickly, with plenty of helping hands and the right equipment. The Coast Guard station can also provide a base for personnel to coordinate efforts or to hunker down when the weather gets too bad to send response vessels.   But the drill sites in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas are over 1,000 miles away from Kodiak, and there’s no Coast Guard station nearer than that.  Shell claims their spill response ship Arctic Challenger can contain an underwater leak, but external support could take days or weeks to reach an out of control vessel, or even worse, a spill.

If something like the 2010 BP Oil Spill were to occur in the Arctic Ocean, the environmental damage would be truly unimaginable: iconic arctic species like whales, polar bears and walruses could all suffer. There is also a huge risk of damaging the intricate and pristine ecology of the Arctic Ocean in ways we don’t fully understand yet.  Combine that with the danger to spill response crews, and it’s hard to believe Shell is willing to risk drilling in the Arctic Ocean at all.

This latest fiasco with the Kulluk could have been a New Year’s oil spill.  The incident surely shows that Shell, even with state of the art equipment, cannot  prevent accidents in the remote Arctic. We can only hope that this and Shell’s other recent travails will convince lawmakers and the administration to put an end to offshore drilling in the Arctic before it’s too late.

The Royal Dutch Shell Company began drilling in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea on Sunday, with potentially disastrous consequences for Alaska’s wildlife.

The Chukchi Sea is home to many imperiled species, such as bowhead whales, Pacific walrus, and polar bears, a species already facing enormous challenges due to melting sea ice, one of the many effects of climate change.  A major oil spill here could be even more destructive to wildlife than the Gulf oil spill of 2010, because a cleanup response would be nearly impossible to perform.  Here’s why:

The threatened Steller’s eider, a seasonal visitor to the Chukchi. Birds suffer heavily in oiled waters: the oil on their feathers destroys their insulation from the cold, and makes them sick when they try to clean themselves.

Infrastructure.  The nearest coast guard station is in Kodiak, Alaska, more than 1000 miles away.  The closest village to the Chukchi Sea drilling site has just one small boat ramp and no hotels to accommodate cleanup crews.  The nearest airports that can handle the large cargo planes needed to transport oil cleanup equipment are 100 miles away or more.

Weather.  The Chukchi Sea is almost completely covered in ice over the winter months.  In summer, 20-foot swells, gale force winds and thick, lingering fog is common.  Stormy seas would endanger the lives of crew members and render oil booms and skimmer boats useless.  It can take weeks or months for backup rigs to drill relief wells, even in the relatively calm waters of the Gulf; in the Chukchi Sea, it may take even longer.  Worst of all, if an oil well breaks open and can’t be capped by the end of the summer, it will gush into the sea for months beneath the Chukchi Sea’s winter ice pack.

Temperature.  The temperature of Arctic seawater is often far below freezing, making it difficult to burn off oil because the water below the surface-oil cannot be heated sufficiently to start the burn.  Oil dispersant chemicals are known to be ineffective in cold temperatures, in addition to the potential harmful effects they could have on marine life.  Finally, oil simply takes longer to break down in cold temperatures.

A Fragile Ecosystem.

Polar bears are already stressed by the loss of sea ice they use to hunt due to climate change.  A major oil spill would jeopardize their food supply even more.  Photo (c) Joan Cambray.

The Chukchi Sea supports an intricate and delicate web of life. It provides critical food sources for migratory birds from around the world and pristine waters for important parts of the life cycle of many fish species. Every part of this ecosystem, from the tiniest zooplankton to the greatest bowhead whale, would be threatened by an oil spill in the Chukchi.  As the Defenders of Wildlife Fact Sheet on drilling in the Arctic details,

 “exposure to oil damages the eyes, mouth, skin and lungs of marine mammals and reduces the insulating effect of feathers on birds. Wild animals can also suffer from kidney failure after ingesting oil in attempts to clean themselves. Those animals that manage to survive will still be at risk from accumulating pollutants and metals in their bodies from the fish they eat. They may also suffer from starvation as the food chain they rely on for survival is disrupted.”

Even without a spill, noise and toxic pollution that are a normal part of industrial drilling will negatively impact local wildlife.  There is also so much about the arctic ecosystem of the Chukchi that we just don’t know anything about.  In its review of drilling plans the government admitted to a complete lack of information on key wildlife populations and their use of the Chukchi, but approved Shell’s drilling plans anyway.    The fact is that the Chukchi Sea is one of the last places any oil company should be allowed to drill.

Noise from drilling rigs disturbs marine mammals like these bowhead whales, which depend on echolocation to navigate the icy waters of the Chukchi.

Ironically, Shell was only able to drill for one day before a large ice floe forced it to back off the drill site. This should be a warning cry about the hazards of drilling in the Chukchi Sea.

We must not let our thirst for oil put yet another rich and vibrant ecosystem at risk of an environmental catastrophe, especially when this time, if an oil spill happens, cleanup will be virtually impossible.  Only time will tell if Alaskan wildlife can weather this latest threat to their survival.

UPDATE 9/17/12:  Shell’s oil containment barge suffered damage to its oil containment dome during testing, causing the company to scrap efforts to drill in the Chukchi until next year.  The barge had been previously plagued with leaks and safety standard issues, and has been unable to reach Coast Guard certification.  The threat of an oil spill has subsided-for now-but this fragile place will be in danger once more if drilling resumes in 2013.

The Arctic’s Beaufort Sea, NOAA

NEWS: The Interior Department released its 5-year offshore drilling plan yesterday, which includes plans to open more of the Arctic Ocean to offshore drilling.

The following is a statement from Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife:

“Despite presiding over the worst oil disaster in U.S. history and on the heels of green lighting Shell’s exploration in Arctic waters this summer, the Obama administration is now planning additional leasing in one of the most pristine, but least understood waters in the world without basic scientific information about its wildlife. Apparently, the lesson from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill has not soaked in to the Obama administration — there’s no foolproof way to drill safely in remote, environmentally sensitive areas like the Arctic Ocean.”

The Arctic's Beaufort Sea, courtesy NOAA

A coalition of Alaska Native and conservation groups today challenged the Obama administration’s decision to allow offshore oil drilling by Shell Oil in the Beaufort Sea in America’s Arctic Ocean.

After the devastating Deepwater Horizon spill, the Obama administration wisely delayed plans by Shell Oil to drill in the Arctic Ocean. But this August, the administration reversed course and approved the first part of the most aggressive Arctic drilling proposal in the history of the country by approving Shell’s plans to start drilling in the Beaufort Sea as early as the summer of 2012.

A spill in the Arctic Ocean would devastate polar bears, bowhead whales and other marine mammals and would severely affect Native subsistence communities which have thrived in this region for generations.

The most recent oil spill drill in the Beaufort Sea (which took place more than 10 years ago) described mechanical cleanup in icy conditions as a “failure.”  Nothing has changed since that drill. A recent report to the Canadian government concluded cleanup would be impossible 44 to 84 percent of the time during the short summer drilling season and completely impossible the other seven to eight months of the year.

“Pretending there’s no risk associated with drilling, especially in the fragile waters of the Arctic, is not only irresponsible, it’s unacceptable.”

U.S. Coast Guard officials have repeatedly explained that the resources to clean up an oil spill in the waters of the Arctic Ocean simply don’t exist. This summer, Commandant Admiral Robert Papp told Congress that the federal government has “zero” spill response capability in the Arctic.

Science has shown the Beaufort Sea to be essential habitat for endangered bowhead whales. Photo courtesy NOAA

Defenders’ Sierra Weaver said, “Both Shell and the federal government are proceeding as if the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster – the worst environmental catastrophe this country has ever seen – simply didn’t happen. Pretending there’s no risk associated with drilling, especially in the fragile waters of the Arctic, is not only irresponsible, it’s unacceptable.”

Defenders is among a broad coalition of Alaska Native and conservation groups represented by Earthjustice who are challenging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement’s (BOEMRE) decision to allow oil drilling in the Beaufort Sea. Click here to read the full press release and see what other groups are saying about this risky and shortsighted move.

Learn more:

See how offshore drilling threatens the Arctic’s fragile marine environment.

Read more about Shell’s inadequate oil spill response plan and the threat it poses to bowhead whales and polar bears.

Ignoring the continued impacts of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, the federal government illegally authorized new deepwater drilling by claiming that risky operations will cause no significant harm to the environment. Defenders was joined by three groups yesterday in challenging the government approval of Shell’s plan to conduct new deepwater exploratory drilling off Alabama’s coast even though regulators acknowledge that the operations may result in an oil spill ten times bigger than last year’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, special risks emerge when drilling ultra-deepwater wells at depths greater than 5,000 feet – including the risk of an uncontrolled blow-out (as was the case with Deepwater Horizon). But after a cursory 30-day review, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) determined that there would be no significant impact from new exploratory deepwater drilling by Shell Gulf of Mexico Inc. in about 7,200 feet of water – more than 2,000 feet deeper than BP’s Deepwater Horizon well (approx. 5,000 feet below the surface).

The government approved Shell’s plan to conduct new deepwater exploratory drilling off Alabama’s coast even though regulators acknowledge that the operations may result in an oil spill ten times bigger than last year’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s not all – the worst case scenario oil spill detailed in the plan is only as much as 405,000 barrels (17 million gallons) of oil a day for up to 128 days, which could result in a spill of 45 million barrels (1.89 billion gallons) of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. This is only a fraction of what gushed into the Gulf during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, which spilled more than 4.9 million barrels (200 million gallons) of oil.

Mike Senatore, Defenders’ vice president of Conservation Law said, “BOEMRE has admitted the old environmental analyses were rendered obsolete by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But even after acknowledging that they need to take a new look at the risks of deepwater drilling, the agency is moving forward with blinders on.”

More than a year after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, effects are still clearly present, including fishermen reports of Gulf finfish like red snapper with open and unhealed sores, University of Georgia scientists documentation of a seafloor still covered in oil and dead creatures, and University of Central Florida research that recently linked the oil spill to more than 150 dead dolphins that washed up on Gulf coasts since January 2011, including 65 newborn, infants, stillborn or those born prematurely.

Scientists are still examining the full impact of the disaster, including impacts that may show up over time in the Gulf food chain and in future generations of aquatic life. Many communities and residents whose livelihoods and culture are tied to the Gulf through fisheries, seafood, and tourism are still recovering from the impact of the months-long BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Learn more:

Click here to read the full release.

One year later, Defenders continues to fight for wildlife in the Gulf. Click here to learn more about what we’re doing and see what YOU can do to help!

On May 21st, 2010, Defenders of Wildlife interviewed several Native Alaskan activists who have recently returned from areas affected by the Gulf oil disaster and are working to stop dangerous drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas near their communities. This is their story.