Arctic Rape

We just don't learn.

My cynicism with the U.S.' Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management and Regulatory Enforcement (BOEMRE) was validated last week when Shell Offshore- owned by Royal Dutch Shell- was granted 'conditional approval' to drill in the Arctic's Beaufort Sea next year. Another brick in the wall of Arctic devastation has been laid; humanity will pay much more than the $3.5 billion Shell paid for those Arctic leases by the time this environmental rape is done with.

Ironically, Royal Dutch Shell is fighting to control a "substantial" spill off a ruptured pipeline in the Gannet field in North Sea- the worst since 2000- as I write this. The British The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) puts the figures at " several hundred tonnes," but we know, after the Deep Water Horizon explosion, that announced figures mean very little and are often intended to obfuscate, not clarify. Interestingly, Shell says- with suspicious accuracy- that only 216 tonnes of oil has been spilled so far. These numbers- and the story- is being modified almost daily, so do not hold me to them.

The Deepwater Horizon environmental disaster will look- in retrospect- like a drop of oil in the ocean compared to an Arctic incident of even a fraction of similar magnitude. Drilling hundreds of miles away from  the nearest Coast Guard base, with ice and inclement weather to boot, Shell's expansive 'three tier' contingency plans in the frigid waters of the Arctic -that it says are sufficient to contain a major spill- will obviously be as worthless as junk bonds. For a start, there is no proven technology for cleaning up oil in icy water; skimming boats do not work. If a blowout happens when ice is freezing over, say some scientists, the earliest that relief wells can be drilled may be next summer, which means months of oil leaking into pristine waters unchecked. 

Listen to retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who led the US response to the Gulf spill, saying earlier this year that the US was ill-equipped to deal with a major oil disaster in Alaska, given harsh weather, little infrastructure and unpredictable ice. Environmentalists have used words like 'inexcusable' and phrases like "disaster waiting to happen" and "dangerous and disappointing" after the BOEMRE clearance given to Shell was announced.  Chuck Clusen, director of Alaska projects for the Natural Resources Defence Council, says the approval is "either the height of irresponsibility or the height of ignorance — but either way it should be stopped.”

Shell's contingency plans for Arctic drilling- based on which I presume the approvals have been granted, make the delusional claim that the company will recover 90 percent of any oil that will spill after a Horizon type catastrophe. Ridiculous, given that only five percent (yes, five) of oil could be recovered in the Gulf after the Horizon blowout, and the waters there were temperate and infrastructure available much closer. Shell's delusional plans make no allowances for the fact that the disaster site may be inaccessible for weeks, if an incident happens at the wrong place at the wrong time.

It appears that the ban on drilling that the Obama administration announced in the aftermath of the Horizon catastrophe was obviously temporary eyewash; now that public outrage has subsided, the only game in town-crony capitalism-can safely resume its march again.  

But why blame only the US or single out just Shell? The fact is that the oligarchs- often huge multinational companies- rule the world today with their henchmen government-accomplices across the world. From Africa to Russia to the US to India, mineral resources are plundered and looted with scant regard for the environment or the livelihoods of indigenous peoples. These companies co-opt politicians and administrations in much the same way as the old European colonial East India Companies did, giving each collaborator a personal stake in the loot-Directorships of companies post retirement included.

Today's East India Companies are less honest about their rape and plunder, though. They cloak their ravenous greed with meaningless environmental assessment and contingency plans made for hypocritical approval processes, but their intention is rape.  The only other difference between the old colonialists and the new ones is that the new ones have hundreds of employees and consultants- and entire puppet governments- on hand to manage events when the inevitable disaster occurs. As in the Deep Water Horizon case, when even journalists were barred by the Obama government from taking photographs of tarred beaches and dying marine life . These oligarchs know fully well that a disaster is a statistical probability- even certainty- and that the fallout will not be containable when it occurs. Therefore, they decide that they will manage the outrage and keep the natives from getting too restless instead, when disaster does strike. Their strategy, in short, is a) rape b) manage outrage. They have no strategy for the protection of the environment.

It helps to do all this when the natives themselves are addicted to oil.

The impending destruction of the Arctic is just another step on a long road to hell. The devastation of the pristine and frigid end of the earth may well turn out- as we all know- to be the last straw that makes the planet itself become hostile to us. The new colonialists are trying to convince us that the Arctic is the last frontier, but that is a lie. It is actually the last bastion. 

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Thoughts after catastrophe

As I write this ten days after it exploded and sank, the Deep Water Horizon calamity, because that is exactly what it is, will be a game changer- and not just for the oil industry. We in commercial shipping may distance ourselves by making a distinction between an oil rig and a ship, but the average Joe does not, and neither will regulators and governments that look aghast at the devastation that a single marine accident has caused.


The statistics are staggering. The Horizon will likely rival Exxon Valdez on the disaster scale by the time this appears in print; the present slick is at 9 million and growing at the rate of 5000 to 25000 barrels of oil a day; at one stage it tripled in size within twenty-four hours. Worse, this will probably ravage much larger areas off the US coast than the Valdez incident thanks to geography, the Gulf Stream and the Loop Current. Louisiana accounts for a third of domestic seafood produce in the United States, and this 1.8 billion US dollar industry now threatens to disappear almost overnight. Scientists are warning that the coastline of Florida may be at risk too. Amongst the other casualties of this devastation will be bottlenose dolphins, alligators, endangered turtles and hundreds of bird species. The impact of this single incident will be felt for years- even decades.

“I can’t imagine we’re not going to have some mass casualties,” says Michael Parr of the American Bird Conservancy. He is right; there is no sign that the leak will be plugged anytime soon, what with robot underwater craft working 5000 feet underground with no real solution in hand. The financial costs of the cleanup are likely to be equally staggering. BP, the operator of the rig, has seen 20 billion dollars of its market-cap wiped out since the incident; cleanup costs obviously not included here.

Political finger pointing in the US is well underway, although nobody is clean enough to do that. There is big money involved; the lease for a deepwater rig runs to a million dollars a day, give or take. President Obama is in the hot seat, having proposed increased drilling off the US Atlantic coast just weeks ago. (Republicans are also calling the Horizon Obama’s Katrina, though that is a little unfair; Katrina was not creating mayhem at the bottom of the ocean floor). Not that the Republicans have a cleaner history, with Sarah Palin’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” slogan for the industry fresh in people’s minds- and which many say should now read ‘Spill, Baby, Spill.”

The Deep Water Horizon episode will almost certainly end with much tougher US safety and oil spill response regulation, and therefore increased costs, for the oil industry. Commercial shipping, it’s cousin, won’t escape easily either.

Leaving the US for awhile, lest we think this is just their problem, I read recently that Nigeria has a couple of thousand incidents in its oilfields annually; many are, let us say, not minor. I am surprised that Saddam Hussein’s destruction of the oilfields and the estimated 520 million gallons spilled into the Persian Gulf did not result in a greater uproar; that was a deliberate act. In any case, much of the developing world is chasing oil at sea, and much of it gives, compared to the US, much lower priority and funding to the possibilities of such catastrophe, or resources required post accident. I shudder to think what would happen if a similar incident were to happen on the Indian coast; this is a country that ignores ships sinking and leaking oil in ecologically sensitive areas on its coastline. Orissa is a particular case in point.

Finally, my soapbox take on all this:
Oil and shipping companies get a bad rep, some of it undeserved.

More than 90percent of all goods-including oil- is carried by sea.

Recent accidents that could have been major include the Cosco Busan in Frisco and the Shen Neng I in the Great Barrier Reef (the Aussies did a slap up job there, with luck assisting). There have been at least five accidents, to my knowledge, on the Indian coast in the last couple of years where little has been done to even understand the risks, leave alone fix them. Two or three of these have been off Orissa, and have endangered the coastline, sanctuaries and endangered species (like the Olive Ridley turtles), but nobody really cares. We don’t have the equipment. We don’t have the people. Worst of all, we don’t have the will.

Ships and oil platforms are getting bigger and more numerous. Operators of both are run by accountants with calculators, who override professionals, though in reality both businesses require highly trained people and expensive equipment for safety.

Governments around the world, including the US, are just not geared to deal with the scale of such disasters. Hell, they cannot even deal effectively with a twenty year old issue that has been found to cause major accidents- fatigue at sea- because of the same accountants.

So, unless the world a) changes consumption patterns and/or b) is willing to pay much more for everything (which will happen soon enough- since every marine accident brings new regulation and more stringent safety features and so raises costs- this one will, too), future disasters will be more in number and bigger. Simple statistics of probability, really.

Meanwhile, part of the problem is you and I, as consumers.
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