Follow-up on the Arctic Five Year Oil and Gas exploration plan

A few weeks back we asked you all to sign on to a petition addressed to NOAA chief Dr. Jane Lubchenko expressing concerns about the rampant expansion of Arctic oil and gas exploration and production (E&P). Thanks to your participation and the outreach efforts of World Wildlife Fund we pulled in over 8500 signatures!

While it remains to be seen how effective the petition will be, your signatures were submitted along with our comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Arctic Five-year Oil and Gas Exploration Plan (DEIS) – which was the specific focus of our concern.

Our comments drilled down into noise impacts only (pardon the pun), leaving comments on the impacts of oil spills, effluent discharge, drilling mud disposal, methane and other gas releases, physical habitat disruption, ship strikes, and the synergistic impacts of increased human activities to others.

While we brought up new data on the disruptions of seismic surveys, our comments also highlighted the noise sources from new “sub-sea” and deepwater technologies which have not yet been evaluated for noise impacts. These include seafloor processing, thruster-stabilized drilling platforms, and acoustic communication systems for autonomous vessel and equipment control.

We also brought up the point that while the DEIS evaluates various chronic noise sources independently (and thus constrained only by a 160dB re: 1µPa mitigation threshold) the ongoing noises of each of these technologies become an aggregate noise field that should be framed under the “continuous noise” mitigation threshold of 120 dB.

Consideration of aggregate and cumulative impacts has been detailed in a paper published this month in Bio Science, “A New Framework for Assessing the Effects of Anthropogenic Sound on Marine Mammals in a Rapidly Changing Arctic”.

Scientists, indigenous hunters, fishermen, environmental activists, conservationists, the British Parliament, American citizens, and even some enlightened American politicians are all trying to put the brakes on drilling the arctic. We all know that there is a lot at stake and none of us want to see this pristine environment destroyed just for a few years of petroleum profits.

But even with the ongoing global incidents of oil spills and other environmental damage (Shell had over 200 oil spills last year alone!) the Oilmen have been driving the issue of “need” solely based on the price of gas at the pump.

Hopefully cooler minds will prevail, regulators will heed our collective warnings (substantiated by your signatures) and Arctic Oil Extraction plans will be “put on ice” for an indefinite period of time.

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