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Stevens asks for guide to the future, gets condemnation of the past Zero impact, zero development seem standards in North Slope cumulative impact study from National Academies, but report does quell one rumor: there is no accumulated impact from oil and saltwater spills Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
In 1999 U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens asked Congress to fund a study by the National Academy of Sciences on cumulative effects of North Slope oil and gas activities. He saw the results March 3 and he was not happy.
In a March 4 statement Stevens said the report has been used to bring forth information that will be used as a weapon against oil and gas development in Alaska, and said the report “should be weighed according to the prejudices of those who wrote it,” noting that three of those participating in the study signed a petition to the president opposing development of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in a March 4 statement that while she questioned some of the opinions of the National Academy of Sciences study, she believes the report confirms that oil development can occur without harming Alaska’s environment. She also said the report provides a blueprint for ways to improve development and mitigate any negative effects of energy exploration.
“I have some concerns about some of the assumptions in the report,” Murkowski said. “It seems some of the scientists who worked on it considered any change in Alaska as negative regardless of the benefits that the change produced. When you look at a specific example, like a road, the residents of the area may view a road as a very positive benefit. But when they talk about change, any change, it is viewed in a negative light.”
Committee defends work The committee which prepared the report talked about its work at a March 4 news conference.
Gordon Orians, chair of the committee and a professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Washington, said the committee looked at “all evidence for effects on the physical, biological and human environment on the North Slope” from oil and gas exploration and development, looking at both “effects to date … to see how they’ve accumulated” and a scenario for future expansion, assuming prices were favorable for continued development, a continuation of the current regulatory framework and use of best available technology.
Orians said the committee’s work had one positive result in the areas of oil spills.
“The committee did an exhaustive analysis of the oil spills on the North Slope and concluded that these have not accumulated over time — the effects have not accumulated over time — because these spills have been small, reasonably contained on pads and roads, small areas of the tundra have been effected and they have been rehabilitated before further damage has occurred.”
Roads, off-road seismic travel a problem Roads, however, are a problem because they disrupt surface flows; ponds form on the sides of the roads; permafrost melts on the sides of the roads; and dust is carried off the roads onto surrounding vegetation, Orians said.
Seismic surveys, despite regulations, cause “a certain amount of damage to tundra vegetation and soils” and some of that damage persists “at least a couple of decades.” Surveys are done in winter using off-road vehicles. Orians said the total amount of such damage cannot be determined because where companies shoot seismic is proprietary information.
Bowhead whales are driven farther offshore than they normally travel by seismic noise, causing risk to Native subsistence hunters who must go farther offshore to hunt them and increasing the chance that the whale meat will spoil or deteriorate before the hunters can get it back to shore.
Onshore, female caribou are “especially sensitive to noise and activities” during calving, and “calving areas have been shifted to places with lesser quantity and poorer quality of vegetation,” Orians said.
Some animals have done well: predators such as Arctic foxes, ravens and gulls that feed on garbage have increased. Because they also eat bird eggs and fledglings, they are a threat to bird populations.
Communities on the North Slope “have benefited substantially from the influx of financial resources coming from the taxation of the oil infrastructure,” but economic benefits have been accompanied by “a number of conditions that most of the people in those villages find unsatisfactory and the committee recommends that more research be done to determine exactly how those negative effects are produced,” and if and to what extent problems are the result of oil and gas activities. Lack of planning Orians said the committee was concerned about a lack of planning and found that “different agencies and entities that have jurisdiction over what goes on have not communicated well with one another.
He said the committee hopes “that the impact of this report will be that by providing this first comprehensive scientific assessment of the effects on the environment of these activities and how they’ve accumulated over time,” the report will be used by those making policy decisions “about the use of resources and the expansion of activities on the North Slope to inform their decisions so that the best possible decisions will be made and the undesirable effects on the environment that might otherwise occur can be avoided.”
Committee members Bill Kearney, media relations officer for The National Academies, defended the selection of committee members. He said the “committee was made up of 18 experts chosen on the basis of their expertise in a wide range of areas, including oil exploration and development, geology, hydrology, biology, ecology, sociology, anthropology, economics and even physics of permafrost.” Kearney said the committee included members who have worked in the oil industry.
“Rigorous procedures were followed to ensure that the committee was balanced and free from conflict of interest,” Kearney said. And he noted that the committee “reached unanimous consent on all their findings and recommendations.”
A ChevronTexaco official told Petroleum News Alaska that the overall tone of the report is very inflammatory, but when you wade through and get to the facts, it’s very favorable toward additional development — and the report also makes it very clear that most of the damage occurred in the early years of exploration and development.
“You have to sort through the inflammatory language in the report to get to the facts,” he said. “Towards the end of the part on seismic it makes it clear that seismic methods have changed drastically.”
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