Oil and Arctic Ocean Make A Highly Troublesome Mix
As the U.S. and Russia take the first halting steps to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean, experts say the harsh climate, icy seas, and lack of any infrastructure means a sizeable oil spill would be very difficult to clean up and could cause extensive environmental damage.
Ideally, the Canadian Coast Guard would have been on hand to deal with the situation. But the icebreaker it routinely dispatches to the Beaufort Sea had gone back to Vancouver for the winter. It would have taken a week for it to return.
In the days that followed, powerful currents swept the barge into Alaskan waters. The U.S. Coast Guard couldn’t do anything because its one operating icebreaker was stationed in Antarctica at the time. Canadian and U.S. officials thought the barge would most likely be locked in the ice, or crushed by ice and sink. It continued to drift, however, and when satellite observers checked last month the barge was about 40 miles off Russia’s Chukchi Peninsula. Russian attempts to find the barge have been hampered, likely to due to bad weather.
As potential oil spills go, the barge incident is an extremely minor one. But experts say that the errant barge should be a wake-up call for Arctic nations like the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark, and Norway that are poised to ramp up shipping, as well as oil and gas drilling, in the Arctic.
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