The Kara Sea, a body of Arctic waters so remote that the Soviet Union used it as an atomic- waste dump for more than 25 years, has become the focus of an environmental battle that oil companies are preparing to win.
EDUARD GISMATULLIN; Bloomberg News Published: Sept. 26, 2012 at 12:05 a.m. PDT
The Kara Sea, a body of Arctic waters so remote that the Soviet Union used it as an atomic- waste dump for more than 25 years, has become the focus of an environmental battle that oil companies are preparing to win.
Exxon Mobil and its Russian partner Rosneft are taking steps to drill near the ocean-floor wasteland, eager to plumb an Arctic region estimated to hold enough crude to supply the world for five years. They’ve sidestepped environmental groups’ calls for a cleanup prior to exploration of the area off Russia’s northern coast where Soviet ships dumped worn-out reactors and 17,000 containers of radioactive waste.
Scientists in Norway on Tuesday presented the first survey of atomic pollution in the region for 18 years. Levels of gamma radiation haven’t increased and are “generally low,” said Hilde Elise Heldal, the Norwegian leader of the expedition. The lack of visible leaks may rob some ecologists of a weapon to stop drilling that oil companies say can be done safely.
“All ecological and nature protection norms are being followed at the same time,” Rustam Kazharov, a spokesman at Rosneft, said by email. The Moscow-based company is preparing for exploration based on Russian law and “the best world practices available.” Exxon and Rosneft this month agreed to start designing a platform to drill in the Kara Sea’s shallow waters. The first well could be started as soon as 2014.
The Kara Sea’s toxic history highlights the risks to the Arctic, one of the world’s most remote regions and still a magnet for environmental activism. Politicians including a group of British legislators and ecologists have urged a ban on oil and gas exploration to protect the region from the risk of spills.
Greenpeace has campaigned against Arctic drilling by Royal Dutch Shell in Alaska, Cairn Energy in Greenland and Gazprom in Russia. The activist group will oppose drilling in the Kara Sea regardless of the published findings, said Dima Litvinov, a Greenpeace campaigner on Russian issues.
“This waste must be retrieved and stored as safely as possible on land if we are to avoid a catastrophe,” Litvinov said. “Russians, or anyone else, shouldn’t be drilling for hydrocarbons in the Arctic.”
The single most dangerous item at the bottom of the sea is the K-27 nuclear submarine, scuttled by the Soviet navy in 1981. While there’s no sign of increased radiation from the ship, corrosion may damage the ship’s reactor and potentially cause an environmental emergency, according to the state-run Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, or NRPA.
“There might be a hypothetical possibility that the spent nuclear fuel in the reactor in extreme situations can cause an uncontrolled chain reaction, which can lead to heat and radioactivity releases,” said Per Strand, a director at the agency, which backed the international scientific expedition.
Authorities in Russia and Norway need to make the safe disposal of K-27 their top priority, Strand said in an interview. The sea lies about 600 miles east of Norway.
International scientists, who last measured pollution in the Kara Sea in 1994, will need to continue to carry out sample tests, Igor Shumakov, a deputy head of the Russian hydrometeorology watchdog, said Tuesday at a news conference in Kirkenes, Norway. “The Russian government is drafting a plan to clean up the Arctic seas.”
The joint Norwegian-Russian expedition took water, biological and bottom sediment samples in the Stepovogo Fjord, where the K-27 submarine was sunk, Heldal said. The scientists sent remote-controlled submersible vehicles with cameras and didn’t detect any corrosion damage to the outer hull, she said. A survey of selected containers with radioactive waste also showed that they are “intact,” she said.
Rosneft, Exxon’s partner and Russia’s state oil company, last month began surveying the East Prinovozemelsky 1 and 2 license blocks. Block 1 is adjacent to the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, where the Soviet regime dumped reactors and waste, according to research published in 1993 by Russian scientist Alexei Yablokov.
“Prior to drilling any well, we study the seabed in the surrounding area for potential hazards,” Patrick McGinn, a spokesman at Irving, Texas-based Exxon, said by email. “This is standard industry practice.”
Until 1992, the Soviet Union dumped solid and liquid waste in the neighboring Kara and Barents seas, including atomic fuel from the icebreaker Lenin, the world’s first nuclear-powered civilian vessel, according to an NRPA report. There’s still a lack of comprehensive data about the dumping because of Soviet secrecy and poor accountability, said Igor Kudrik, an ecologist from Norwegian campaign group Bellona.
“Oil companies should make sure that the area is wiped clean of nuclear waste before they start any oil exploration activity,” Kudrik said. “In the worst-case scenario – that is, an uncontrolled chain reaction in the reactor of K-27 – radiation will spread in the Kara Sea and create major difficulties for any industrial activity.”
The three blocks where they’ve been granted permission may hold as much as 21 billion metric tons of oil and natural gas, the Russian company says. That would be almost five years of global oil use, according to BP data.
Norway’s Statoil ASA and Eni SpA of Italy have set up joint ventures with Rosneft to explore in the Russian area of the Barents Sea, a larger body of water next to the Kara Sea, where the Soviet Union also dumped liquid waste. The partners are targeting about 15 billion and 26 billion barrels of oil and gas resources respectively.
Statoil will invest about $2.5 billion in initial exploration with Rosneft, including additional areas in the Sea of Okhotsk. “We do not expect nuclear waste issues to hinder the joint exploration,” Baard Glad Pedersen, a spokesman at Statoil, said by e-mail.
Safety equipment that Shell Oil volunteered to put into place for drilling off the coast of Alaska is complicating the company’s quest to reach oil-bearing rock during the short open water drilling season this year. (Philiip A. Dwyer/Associated Press)
Last week, Royal Dutch Shell announced .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/shell-thwarted-in-plans-to-drill-for-arctic-oil-this-year/ .. it was abandoning plans to harvest oil off the coast of Alaska this year, after the company sustained damage to a spill-containment dome. The setback came after Shell had spent $4.5 billion and nearly seven years obtaining leases to drill for oil in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Shell said it would instead drill a handful of preliminary “top holes” to prepare for drilling in 2013.
“Oil on Greenland would be a disaster,” de Margerie said. “A leak would do too much damage to the image of the company.” (It’s worth noting, however, that Total still has a few natural gas ventures in the Arctic off the coast of Russia — the company claims that gas leaks are easier to deal with. And most of Total’s major competitors, including ExxonMobil and ENI, are all looking to drill for oil off Alaska, Russia, or Greenland.)
“Challenges with infrastructure and spill response are unprecedented in the Arctic’s remote, undeveloped region,” the Democrats wrote in their letter .. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9725593/Arctic%20OCS%20letter.pdf .. (pdf). ”The Arctic Ocean is characterized by hurricane-force storms, 20-foot swells, sea ice up to 25 feet thick, sub-zero temperatures and months-long darkness … In the event of an oil spill, the response may be too slow, and irreversible damage to ecosystems and species could result.”
The Obama administration has so far been cautiously supportive of Shell’s endeavors in Alaska, albeit under heavy regulations. It’s unclear whether Durbin’s letter will alter the Interior Department’s stance at all.
giving an overview of the lack of infrastructure in the Arctic.) Earlier this year, one German bank declared that it would not finance Arctic drilling, saying that the risks were too great.
Even so, it’s unlikely that energy companies will be deterred that easily. The oil and gas resources are too vast to ignore. Shell’s geologists have said that their leases in the Chukchi Sea could one day yield 400,000 barrels of oil per day — about 7 percent of all current U.S. production. And a recent report .. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/sharewatch/market-report-10bn-if-shell-cracks-it-with-arctic-drilling-7866604.html .. from Nomura Holdings estimated that oil in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas could eventually yield $10 billion in value for Shell.
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