About a month ago Nature Journal published a sobering article about the risks of pushing oil production into the arctic. “A Frozen Hell” by Jeffrey Short and Susan Murray examines the disaster potentials in attempting to extract oil in the extreme arctic environment.
The thrust of the article focuses on the consequences of an oil spill in a setting that is life-challenging even on a nice day – pitted against the habitat-fragility of the arctic marine environment. Short and Murray portrayed a daunting environmental threat that would be disastrous if an oil spill occurred.
But even if the assurances of the drillers were satisfactory and a spill does not occur, there will nonetheless be significant ongoing impacts to the marine acoustic environment as a consequence of the noises from all of the operations associated with hydrocarbon exploration and production.
I highlighted some of these consequences in a correspondence published in this week’s issue of Nature which they titled “Noisy oil exploration disrupts marine life.” While their shortened version of the letter abbreviates some of the finer points, the case remains that in addition to a potential catastrophe that could occur as a consequence of a blow-out or shipwreck, the ongoing noise of any “successful” operation would still compromise a pristine Arctic environment that we barely know.
The true disaster is that our unabated thirst for oil and gas is really tearing up our planet.