A Russian company has begun towing a drilling platform into place in the Russian Arctic, despite its lack of preparedness to operate safely in the extreme conditions. Gazprom plans to start using the platform later this year to develop the Prirazlomnoye oil field, 60 kilometers offshore in the Pechora Sea.
“The company’s plans to clean up any oil spills as a result of its operations are totally inadequate,” says Aleksey Knizhnikov, of WWF Russia. The plans do not meet the Arctic Council’s oil and gas guidelines, developed with Russian participation, or a recent order from the Russian President, “permitting oil production only if operators have proven techniques of under-ice oil spill response”.
Gazprom says it plans to reach an annual production level of 6 million tonnes of oil from the Prirazlomnoye field. The total oil storage capacity of the rig is about 120,000 tonnes but the company has no capacity to deal with anything over a minor spill. Neither Gazprom nor any other company has demonstrated the ability to clean up an under-ice spill of thousands of tonnes. Conditions in the planned drilling area include ice ridges up to 8 meters deep, 13 meter waves, and as many as 22 major storms a year. The nearest emergency response centre is in Murmansk, more than 1,000 kilometers distant.
“A spill here would not be only locally devastating, but would echo through Europe,” says Knizhnikov. “Each year, millions of birds migrate to breeding and feeding grounds on the Pechora Sea and the surrounding coast. The rare ‘red book’ Atlantic walruses also have core habitats in this area.”
WWF Russia has joined with other environmental groups in calling on the Russian government to suspend the drilling plans until the company has shown it can comply with the presidential order. The groups are also asking for a comprehensive discussion of issues related to oil spill response in the arctic region and provision of evidence that the company has the capacity for oil spill clean-up.
Source: WWF.
