As the oil and gas industry works to convince Canada’s energy regulator that it can safely drill in the Arctic’s deep waters, it is proposing some creative – and controversial – methods to clean up spills in sea ice: using fires set from helicopters to burn oil and even the propeller blades of icebreakers to disperse it.
Filings submitted to the National Energy Board by Chevron Corp. CVX-N and Imperial Oil Ltd. IMO-T provide a glimpse into how companies would respond to a massive leak like the BP Deepwater Horizon fiasco in a northern setting. They outline the use of numerous techniques, including “herding agents” designed to chemically coalesce oil slicks, as well as huge aircraft to spray dispersants and crews to burn oil.
The documents form part of the NEB’s Arctic Offshore Drilling Review, which is working to set new rules for the exploration of oil and gas in Canada’s Far North. For the oil industry, the Arctic offers an alluring new frontier, a place with the potential for major new finds. For the country, however, drilling in such a sensitive and iconic region has stirred up concern, particularly in the wake of the BP spill. And for critics, the industry’s bold cleanup plans give little cause for reassurance.
As they pursue wells in Beaufort Sea waters as deep as those of the Gulf of Mexico where the BP accident occurred, major energy companies have told the NEB that, in some ways, an Arctic spill could actually be easier to clean than an accident elsewhere. In its submission to the NEB’s review, for example, Chevron says “unique aspects of the Arctic environment … can work to the responders’ advantage.”
Ice, for example, can work as a natural oil boom, corralling spilled crude, while long daylight hours during summer months can extend work days. The Chevron document also suggests Arctic conditions “can enhance spill response” by creating a cold environment where oil evaporates at a slower rate – making it easier to set it on fire – and by covering water in ice, which calms waves and makes cleanup easier.
Freezing ice can also lock oil inside its layers; crews could then track crude-impregnated ice floes over winter and, in spring, burn the oil from surface melt-water pools. Spilled oil can be set alight by heli-torches, the industry suggests. Even icebreaker propeller blades “could provide sufficient energy to create lasting dispersion of any exposed oil, even in close pack ice,” Chevron states.
The arguments are designed in part to bolster industry arguments that its response ability is good enough that it should no longer need to drill an emergency relief well in the same season – an existing requirement designed to stop an out-of-control well, but one that makes some Arctic exploration impossible.
But critics doubt the effectiveness of some techniques, and say the uniquely fragile life in the Arctic will magnify the impact of any accident. They also point to statements from the U.S. presidential commission on the Deepwater Horizon spill, which concluded that there are “serious concerns” about oil spill response capacities in the Arctic, an area whose remoteness and hostile environment pose “special challenges.”
“It boggles the mind to think that industry is asserting that they are response-ready for a worst-case oil spill” in the Arctic, said William Amos, the director of the Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Ottawa, who has also participated in the NEB Arctic review. “Those assertions don’t strike me as credible.”
Spill removal companies have also testified before the Canadian government that many traditional techniques – like laying boom and skimming oil – either don’t work at all, or are substantially less effective in icy waters.
Imperial also makes projections that seem optimistic relative to the Gulf spill. In an Arctic summer open water spill, for example, it says 20 per cent of oil could be burned and a similar amount chemically dispersed. In the Gulf, the U.S. government calculated that 5 per cent was burned and 16 per cent dispersed.
