Arctic drilling may impact northern ecosystems
A three-ship operation in the arctic.
Photo: Kate Moran
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Arctic sea ice has declined and amidst predictions of ice-free Arctic summers, oil companies want to expand their operations further offshore into Arctic waters.
It’s easier and less expensive to drill where there’s less ice. But scientists are concerned that expanded drilling activity could impact sensitive ecosystems. For example, conservation groups and native Alaskans want to protect the migratory waters of the bowhead whale. Jackie Grebmeier is a scientist at the University of Tennessee who specializes in Arctic ecosystems.
Jackie Grebmeier: You have change happening and you have a variety of stress factors – man-induced and naturally induced, going on. And I think that the concern by the scientists is we’re in a changing system.
Grebmeier has observed Arctic ecosystems moving northward, escaping from warming seas. In those regions organisms rely closely on each other in the food chain, and are trying to adapt to quickly changing conditions.
In the summer of 2007, Shell Oil was ordered by a U.S. court to put on hold exploratory drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. According to Grebmeier, Shell needs to develop a cleanup plan for oil spills, and allow more public comment and negotiation.
Tell us your views about drilling for oil in the Arctic by leaving a comment below.
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Jackie Grebmeier added, “Because the ice is retreating so much further north now and is becoming more accessible, there is enhanced interest in exploiting that particuarly for the U.S. in the Chukchi waters, which is the most productive Arctic marginal sea that we have in that area.”
“The ecosystem is very tightly coupled up there. What that means is it’s very low on the food chain so walrus feed right off clams that feed off plankton or bacteria and the bowhead feed off of copepods which. feed off phytoplankton. So you have both environmental change impacting them and then resource exploration. There is a potential if it’s not managed or understood correctly, to have a really catastrophic effect,” she said.
Oil company Shell was recently ordered to stop their exploratory drilling plans in the Beaufort Sea. A U.S. court of appeals ruled that Shell had not followed the set EPA guidelines to get permission to drill. For more, see Shell’s Beaufort drilling plans dealt costly setback by court
Our thanks to:
Jackie Grebmeier
Research Professor and Project Director
Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecology Group
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Kathryn Moran
University of Rhode Island
Betsy Beardsley
Alaska Wilderness League
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I went to Prudhoe Bay in June with a trip sponsored by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. We drove up the Dalton Highway which parallels the pipeline. The pipeline disrupted the permafrost along a very narrow strip; they tried to disrupt no more than absolutely necessary to put in the supports or to bury it. I didn’t get to a buried section but I did get to several above ground sections. North of the Brooks Range, I noted that there is more grass and a few more shrubs near the supports and possibly more vegetation under the pipeline. The pipeline may also disrupt wind patterns and so act as a snow fence and increase moisture in the area. Those facts may in part explain why the caribou herds have increased in areas impacted by the pipeline. We also heard stories about polar bears resting on man-made well pads in the Arctic Ocean.
America needs energy and a lot of it in the form of Natural Gas, Oil, windpower. I remember what my Prof. said, “Anything that produces energy-Pollutes”. Yes, that means even wind energy pollutes. Example is all the heat emitted by a generator- not to mention all the birds whose lives are at risk of a wind generator. Remember Sen Kennedy does not like his view obstructed with wind generators. Nuclear energy has the fear of a nuclear accident, not to mention radioactive wastes. Terrorist would also like to cause a man made nuclear accident. Solar energy on a wide scale blocks all the sunlight needed by plants to grow not to mention all the energy and hadazous materials used to make solar energy a reality. This of course also means less edible plants to eat by animals as well as man. Coal means pollution to nuclear pollution and dangerous conditions to man to get to it. A growing economy like most third world countries and industrialized nations need energy. Conservation can’t be counted on to solve the energy crunch. Remember people there are over 200 nations and the US can’t be counted on to save the world. So people, the choice is yours on how to pollute and where.
How does drilling in ice hurt the environment?
Thanks for producing such a great program! I especially enjoy it when you’re talking about my neck of the woods, so to speak. However, I just wanted to let you know most people around here pronounce Beaufort Sea as BOW-fort, like bow and arrow (not like bow to the crowd).
Keep up the good work!
LJ Evans at the University of Alaska Fairbanks
I enjoyed your program this morning on arctic issues, but question your asking the public their opinion about drilling oil in the arctic, not because I dont’t think people shouldn’t have an opinion, but to ask the American general public what they think about this topic when they don’t live here, when they have no knowledge about the specialized technology available for drilling in environmentally sensitive areas under arctic conditions, or have some knowledge about the REAL issues, both political and cultural, then it is nearly impossible to render an “educated” opinion. Thus any results would only be interesting rather than valid.
Likewise, I couldn’t provide an educated opinion if anyone asked me what I thought about drilling for oil on the barrier islands of North Carolina. I don’t live there, I don’t know the issues, and as such, I shouldn’t really be voicing opinions about something which I am fairly ignorant.
Any opinion rendered without factual knowledge might be interesting, but otherwise not very valuable in terms of effecting outcomes. Moreover, a chronic problem faced by Alaskans is that people from the rest of the country want to tell us how to manage our land and resources to a much greater degree than occurs in other states. A motto we have here is “Alaska for Alaskans,” and while we are a part of the union, our issues really are our own.
We will solve them as as best fits our needs with the technology available. And if we don’t have the technology, we’ll invent it. The University of Alaska Fairbanks schools of engineering and petroleum engineering as well as the UAF Geophysical Institute have produced significant technologies for safer drilling practices and have done amazing things to lessen the footprint of any given well.
But back to the question of oil development in the arctic, the media and environmental organizations make much of their dire prediction that if oil is developed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Porcupine caribou herd will all die or the development will force them into altering their normal migration route. This, in a word, is balderdash. The data just don’t support the contention that development would cause a population decline.
As an example, the population of the Central Arctic caribou herd, which lives in the area of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, thrived as a result of the oil development and more than quadrupled in size from 1974 to 2005.
Caribou, in fact, find it easier to live as a result of the raised roads above the tundra that allow them to be in a better breeze to lessen the aggravation of the clouds of mosquitos and flies that pester them in the summer. And the warmth of the oil in the buried oil pipeline keeps snow melted off the vegetation and avialable to caribou when all the other vegetation is covered with snow and must be “pawed” off to eat it.
And thank you, LJ, for clarifying the first part of the way we pronounce Beaufort instead of how it was pronounced this morning on the show as “Byoo’-fort.” In truth, we say it as “Bow’-fert.”
Keep up the good work sharing science and the opportunity to encourage folks to learn more about science and the world around us. I’ve enjoyed your show for many years and look forward to many more.
Karen Gordon
Fairbanks, Alaska
Many thanks to the porn spammers. Your childishness is most refreshing.
We need to drill and produce petroleum wherever and however we can. Right now we are hostage to a few countries and companies that are bleeding us dry. Since there are more polar bears now than in 1950, I would have to say we ain’t hurt nothin’ yet.
The indigenous folk in the Arctic want drilling so they can have houses and storebought food. The Eskimo lifestyle may look good on TV to folks with full bellies and warm rears, but the folks that live like that want to improve their living conditions.
Sometime if you have a chance, take a ride through Bradley and Slippery Rock Pennsylvania. Then run down to Koontz, Silbee and Kilgore, Texas. Take a look at the trees and verdant growth. Less than one hundred years ago, there were no trees, They had all been cut for lumber to build oil tanks. When the tanks were full the oil was run into ponds dug for the purpose. The land was literally awash in oil. There is no sign of environmental damage now. Nature (it made the oil) took the land back and all is well.
The arctic will be fine. We must protect our economy. If it fails, no one will care about the environment, they will care about food shelter and heat. Also, with no money, no one will be cleaning up anything. It is indeed a luxury to be living in a time and country rich enough to worry about the environment. Without the United States paying the bills, the whole UN environmental show is over.