Showdown at High Latitude

Blue areas are off limits, yellow will be open to leasing. Apparently
because just a few Eskimos, walrus and seals live there, the Arctic
Ocean is fine for drilling.  That was the same kind of thinking that
led to the name "Seward's Icebox" when Alaska was first purchased.
(Map from gCaptain website)

Forces are gathering for what could be an epic collision in the Arctic.  So many forces are moving at once it can only be a matter of time before an explosion.

It began earlier this spring when NOAA reported ice in the Bering Sea was thicker and farther south than average.  As a result of this ice, Shell Oil Co., delayed its assault on the Chukchi Sea for a few weeks.  Then a week or so ago NOAA reported Arctic sea ice had shrunk to the lowest June extent ever.  This is huge for the polar bear population because it means they have to swim farther and farther between ice floes in order to hunt.

On top of the ice news,  Shell's two drill rigs that had been outfitted in Seattle left there early this week, heading north to begin exploratory drilling off the coast of Arctic Alaska.

While they were under way, the U.S. Secretary of  the Interior announced the government was going to open "targeted oil leasing" offshore in the Arctic Ocean across the entire north coast of Alaska.  In the process the secretary said he saw no indication there could be an oil spill in that area.

Today Alaska media reported the Greenpeace ship Esperanza had docked in Kodiak on its own way north to watch Shell operations and to do some baseline study of  the Arctic environment.  The crew was checking in with the Coast Guard at Kodiak apparently discussing their plans for their Arctic voyage.

Baseline studies are important.  In another place where an oil spill could never happen, Alaska's Prince William Sound, when a spill did happen, there was very little in the way of baseline data available to document what had been there before the oil covered everything.  If you can't prove what was there, you can't prove what was lost.

There was no Arctic pack ice to deal with in Prince William Sound, a condition that is probably the most dangerous contingency in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.  As far as I know, no oil rig has ever had to withstand the forces of millions of tons of pack ice moving and pressing against it. What could possibly go wrong in that scenario?

The Secretary of the Interior's affirmations are in no way reassuring and oil industry assurances are laughable. After all, even after the lessons of Exxon Valdez,  when another spill that could never happen occurred from a well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the contingency plan approved by the secretary's department for the area and the response showed nothing had been applied from lessons learned in the Alaska spill.  In fact the Gulf of Mexico contingency plan would work better in the Arctic with its guidance on how to deal with walruses and seals.  What is in Shell's contingency plan for the Arctic, one has to wonder -- how to deal with Niger River crocodiles? What is known is that both the earlier spills took huge amounts of equipment shipped in over long distances from far-away sources.  Just reaching a spill in the Arctic in winter should be a cause for concern, let alone what effect a cleanup effort could possibly have in pack ice.

I have more than 15 years of experience in oil spill response including some training in the Arctic environment at Prudhoe Bay and given that, judging by the equipment observed in the Gulf spill, not much has been improved in the way of equipment or technique since before Exxon Valdez, it seems implausible that anyone can mount an effective response to a spill in the Arctic, particularly in winter. Recalling the thousands of boats that worked on the Exxon spill, it is difficult to imagine Shell's small fleet of supposed response vessels can have any effect at all.

With ice pushing from one direction,  Shell and the rest of the oil industry pushing from another with government help, climate change altering expectations, Greenpeace sniping from the sidelines, Alaska Eskimos concerned about subsistence wildlife and facing an oil company well- known for overrunning native population concerns in Africa, even the most massive blowout protector ever conceived is not going to contain all these pressures.