Holding BP Accountable: Oil Spill Trial Set to Begin Monday

The National Wildlife Federation hosted a teleconference with representatives from three of America’s leading conservation organizations to explore how much BP could be facing at trial, what this case means for restoring the Gulf of Mexico and what a just outcome for the American people would look like.February 22-With a February 25 trial date looming, BP and the U.S. Department of Justice will either reach a settlement or go to trial within the next few days.

For more on the BP Oil Spill, check out the Gulf Oil Disaster page.

You can also check out the latest BP blog “Speak Up for Gulf Dolphins”

US Coast Guard rescues crew of Shell oil rig Kulluk off Alaska, December 29, 2012 (USCG photo/Sara Francis)

An enormous Shell Oil offshore drilling rig ran aground on an island in the Gulf of Alaska on Monday night after it broke free from tow ships in rough seas, officials said.

The rig, the Kulluk, which was used for test drilling in the Arctic last summer, is carrying about 139,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 12,000 gallons of lubricating oil and hydraulic fluid, the officials said.

Thanks to the heroic efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard, 17 crew members on board the Kulluk rig were rescued and brought to safety. But the fate of the area’s wildlife isn’t so clear. While no oil sheen had been spotted as of New Year’s Day, as the Washington Post reports, any spill wouldn’t have to go far to find a range of species:

The Kodiak archipelago, where the rig ran aground, is home to nearly 250 bird species, including horned puffins, red-faced cormorants and Harlequin ducks. It boasts among the highest winter bird counts in Alaska. It is also home to Kodiak brown bears, who feed on local salmon streams.

Watch the grounded rig being battered by waves in this clip from The UpTake:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Times adds that the grounding is only the latest problem for Shell’s Arctic drilling effort:

Last summer, the Kulluk drilled a shallow test well in the Beaufort Sea while another rig drilled a similar hole in the Chukchi Sea to the west.

But Shell announced in September that it would be forced to delay further drilling until this year after a specialized piece of equipment designed to contain oil from a spill was damaged in a testing accident.

The episode was one of a number of setbacks for the Arctic drilling program last year. Shell now says it hopes to drill five exploratory wells in the region during the 2013 drilling season, which begins in mid-July.

Last August, the National Wildlife Federation’s Jeremy Symons warned of the dangers of Shell’s Arctic drilling plans, even calling out the Kulluk by name. Today, his warning seems eerily prescient:

This week a Shell Oil Co. drilling rig, the Kulluk, headed towards the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s northern coast to begin drilling operations.  This flagship effort to open up Arctic waters to drilling has already received the thumbs up from the Obama Administration. I can’t help but recall all those “what if” moments following the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.  What if we hadn’t turned a blind eye to insufficient spill planning?  What if we had proper oversight of oil companies and held them accountable for lying about the risks before approving their permits?  What if we truly weighed the risks and the rewards of moving into new drilling frontiers before disaster strikes?

Shell’s rig is not simply another rig.  It is the pioneer, intended to open a new frontier and convert an unspoiled aquatic wilderness into the next big oil rush. These waters are vital habitat for an abundance of wildlife such as ringed seals, as well as whales that travel the world’s oceans and birds that migrate across North America every year.

Shell’s troubles are far from the only trouble the oil industry has seen in Alaska recently. There was a BP oil spill in July 2011 and a Spanish drilling company’s well blowout in February 2012. As a 2010 National Wildlife Federation report detailed, oil disasters are tragically common.

The National Wildlife Federation will continue monitoring efforts to free the Kulluk and any impacts on wildlife. Keep checking back to Wildlife Promise for updates.

The following is a guest post from Larry Bartlett from Fairbanks, Alaska—he gives a firsthand account of  traveling in the Western Arctic Reserve (also known as the National Petroleum Reserve or NPR-A), the single largest unit of public land in the nation encompassing 23.5 million acres. This land provides habitat for caribou, grizzlies, polar bears, wolves, and millions of migratory birds—including tens of thousands of ducks and geese highly valued by sportsmen throughout the nation.

When Alaskans are asked about the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR), most have never heard of it, few have visited this region, and still fewer have hunted this barren landscape.  That’s precisely the way I prefer it; wild, uncorrupted, scenic, stark, and extremely remote.

Most notably this region in Northwest Alaska serves two biological purposes:

1. Spring breeding grounds for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds;
2. Calving grounds and summer range for the Western Arctic Herd of caribou (the largest caribou herd in Alaska, numbering over 550,000 animals).

I’ve frequently visited the largest drainage existing within the NPR, the Colville basin, starting around 1998. Surprisingly, not much has changed in this region.  It continues to provide wild and remotely scenic adventures to those who wish to endure its vastness firsthand.

©Dave Shreffler

Pristine Wilderness in the Truest Form

Most visitors begin trips to the northwest region starting in July, since breakup occurs in late June on these northwest rivers.  Mosquitos are intense until mid August, so most of my personal travels occur during this time period to mid-September.

After spring calving season, caribou slowly begin a southwest movement from the Utukok uplands, across the Colville River, and continue southwest over the Continental Divide through river drainages and over broad mountain passes of the Brooks Range. Most caribou hunters pursue opportunities along major tributaries of the upper Colville and Noatak rivers.

A unique region, floaters often find bituminous coal chips washed up on the many gravel beaches of the Colville River and its tributaries.  This region has abundant bituminous deposits close to the surface, and oil seeps can also be seen in this region, giving rise to the question of when, not if, these valuable resources will be tapped and exploited from the NPR.

As far as the “experience” floaters can expect, I’ve enjoyed many types, from hunting pursuits for moose and caribou to archeological finds to char fishing.  It’s a great place to escape human encounters and soak up the wonder of this unexploited landscape.

Many fossils, such as mastodon and mammoth tusks, dinosaur bones, and ancient human remains, can be found jutting out from eroding high cliffs and along the shorelines of many clear-flowing tributaries of the Colville River. This region’s wildlife has experienced flows and ebbs of life and death for hundreds of thousands of years, and it continues to be considered one of the richest sources for scientific importance in all of Alaska. The first known inhabitants of North America are thought to have crossed into Alaska and to the Americas from Siberia across the nearby Bering Land Bridge as early as 15,000 years ago. Peoples in this region often buried their dead in shallow rock-covered graves, since permafrost prevented traditional burial practices.  And these mounds can be located in sporadic locations across the tundra and near the banks of the Colville River, so visitors must travel with bright eyes and wary souls to spot these unique anthropologic treasures.

This region has a bounty of possible adventures; however, there are simply too many unique attributes to list that make up the whole “experience” of travelling to this region of Alaska. It’s a resource worth protecting from crude resource extraction, heavy human use and careless travel. Perhaps this region is best described as Alaska’s Northwest Gem, full of wonder, adventure, and historic importance.

Currently, the Bureau of Land Management is finalizing a management plan to determine which lands and waters will be protected and which will be leased for oil and gas development in the Western Arctic Reserve. Thanks to widespread support for conservation, they have identified a preferred plan called ‘Alternative B2′. This plan will preserve wildlife habitat for caribou, grizzly and polar bears, and millions of migratory birds in the Western Arctic. 

Although this is a major step forward — we’re not over the finish line yet. It is important the management plan be finalized to permanently protect wildlife habitat in the Reserve.

Please “like” and “share” our image on Facebook, to thank Interior Secretary Salazar and urge him to stand strong against pressure to open more of the Reserve to oil and gas development.

Grizzly bear wading through the Battle River in Alaska

 
Photo by Flickr member Jenny’s site
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Caribou at the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

 
Photo by Flickr member tomblandford
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Shell’s Kulluk Oil Rig, credit Tom Doyle/Flickr

Shell’s rig is not simply another rig.  It is the pioneer, intended to open a new frontier and convert an unspoiled aquatic wilderness into the next big oil rush. These waters are vital habitat for an abundance of wildlife such as ringed seals, as well as whales that travel the world’s oceans and birds that migrate across North America every year.

Shell Oil:  A Large Spill is Not “Reasonably Foreseeable.”

As a team of oil spill experts warned in a thorough report of Arctic ocean drilling the risks are being minimized and ignored now just as they have been ignored before, as we witnessed so tragically with BP’s ultra deepwater operations. In the Gulf, we had the largest spill response infrastructure in the country to support a dense concentration of long term operations.  In the remote Arctic waters, there is nothing except rough seas and sea ice that can close waters to recovery operations for long periods of time.  Shell is bringing up a single spill response barge.  It’s hard enough to cast a crab pot in these waters, let alone contain millions of barrels of spilled oil.  NWF’s Peter Lafontaine noted last summer this statement by US Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp:

“If the company fails, if the response plan fails, the federal government must in some way be able to back it up with some resources. We had plenty of resources, from bases to communication systems to helicopters, in the Gulf of Mexico. And if this were to happen off the North Slope of Alaska, we’d have nothing.”

So we are crossing our fingers and trusting that Shell can mobilize the resources to handle a spill.  At least they are taking the risk seriously, right?  Well, no:

“A large oil spill, such as a crude release from a blowout, is extremely rare and not
considered a reasonably foreseeable impact.” — Shell Alaska Chukchi Sea Exploration Plan

Sound familiar?  Here’s what BP said in their Gulf drilling plans prior to the Deepwater Horizon blowout:

“In the event of an unanticipated blowout resulting in an oil spill, it is unlikely to
have an impact based on the industry-wide standards for using proven equipment
and technology for such responses.” –Oil Spill Response Plan for BP Deepwater Horizon Drilling

Should we trust an oil company to begin drilling in these unspoiled waters when their plans are based on the premise that a large oil spill isn’t “reasonably forseeable?” No, we know better.  But they received a green light, anyway.

Does Wildlife Matter to Government Drilling Regulators?

Bearded Seal, via Kerry Ritz/Flickr

No evidence?!  Here are some of BOEMRE’s conclusions from their own environmental assessment of what could happen in a major spill (one that significantly underestimates the potential for a long-running blow-out like we saw in the Gulf):

Assuming that all young ringed and bearded seals exposed to the oil died because of absorption (through the skin), inhalation, and/or ingestion of toxic hydrocarbons in the oil, this loss could take these marine mammal populations more than one to two generations to recover Shell (p. 131-2).

Polar bears exposed to petroleum hydrocarbons through direct contact or by ingesting oiled prey would probably not survive (p. 132)

In lagoon habitats, long-tailed duck densities suggest that when large concentrations of molting individuals are present, tens of thousands could be contacted by spilled oil. This would constitute a substantial loss to the regional population. Notable losses would also be experienced by post-breeding common eiders concentrated near barrier islands and in lagoons. A spill …would be expected to contact several other species present in substantial numbers, including the king eider, scoters, northern pintail, Pacific loon, and glaucous gull. (p. 130-1)

Oil Disasters: An Acceptable Cost of Doing Business?

Everyone knows where this story ends up…it really comes down to how often and how big the spills will be off Alaska’s northern shores, and how badly wildlife is impacted.  But the risks of a wildlife disaster are all an acceptable cost of doing business for oil companies.  After all, BP pocketed $24 billion in profits in 2011.  Deepwater Horizon was a financial blip for them, but the damages to marine life will be long-lasting.

This grizzly bear kicks back for a much needed rest on a tree trunk. Photo by Joan Saba.
2011 National Wildlife Photo Contest entry.

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If you didn’t get a chance to see this fascinating special, WATCH IT HERE.

Bristol Bay has remained largely untouched by development–providing pristine habitat for the world’s largest sockeye salmon run, as well as healthy populations of grizzly bears, wolves, moose, caribou and waterfowl. In other words, it’s no place for an industrial mine.

Pebble mine would produce up to ten billion tons of toxic waste over its lifetime. Even tiny amounts of toxic waste can poison the salmon in Bristol Bay that grizzlies and other wildlife depend on. Photo: USFWS.

Urge the Environmental Protection Agency to stop Big Mining from using our waters as industrial waste dumps!