UK scientists attack oil firms' role in huge Arctic project

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UK scientists attack oil firms' role in huge Arctic project

Sixty-country survey to search for fossil fuels in pristine environment

 

David Adam, environment correspondent

Tuesday April 18, 2006

 

Guardian

 

British scientists are at loggerheads with US colleagues over a controversial

plan to work alongside oil companies to hunt for fossil fuel reserves in the

Arctic.

The US Geological Survey is lining up a project with BP and Statoil to find oil

and gas in the Arctic Ocean, under the auspices of a flagship scientific

initiative intended to tackle global warming.

 

But the head of the British Antarctic Survey, which coordinates UK activity at

the poles, has said he is " very uncomfortable " with the idea and has questioned

its ethical and scientific justification.

 

Tackling climate change and working out how it will affect the Arctic and

Antarctic is a central theme of International Polar Year (IPY) - a high-profile

project to start next spring that involves thousands of scientists from 60

countries.

 

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and last September

saw the lowest extent of sea ice cover for more than a century. Scientists say

the temperature there could rise by a further 4C-7C by 2100, and the Arctic

Ocean could be ice-free in summer by 2060.

 

Documents on the IPY website show that BP and Statoil, a Norwegian company, are

" significant consortium members " on a USGS proposal to assess " energy resources

in the circumarctic area including oil, gas, coalbed methane and methane

hydrates " . Geologists estimate that a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil

and gas reserves lie under the Arctic, and analysts have predicted a

21st-century goldrush to tap them as the Arctic Ocean's ice cover retreats.

 

Chris Rapley, the director of the British Antarctic Survey, said: " I would be

very uncomfortable with a project that simply was out to log the hydrocarbon

reserves of the Arctic as a geological activity. I don't think that fits very

comfortably within either the scientific guidelines or the ethical underpinning

of the IPY. "

 

Launching the polar year initiative last month, Professor Rapley said the

scientists would work on projects " that will tackle the urgent environmental

issues " because " rapid climate change is already impacting local peoples ... and

it is only a question of time before the wider consequences become apparent " .

 

The Inuit people have filed a lawsuit against the US government claiming that

greenhouse gas pollution is damaging their livelihoods. Experts have warned the

only realistic way to prevent dangerous climate change is to curb carbon dioxide

emissions from burning fossil fuels.

 

The USGS proposal has been approved by scientists organising the IPY, but Prof

Rapley plans to question its suitability at a committee meeting this week in

Cambridge. " If it was in the context of how are we going to manage the

inevitable move towards extracting these resources from the Arctic in a

sustainable and environmentally friendly way then I think that would be fair

game, " he said. " There is an argument that it is much better to work with

companies that are considering how to exploit these resources rather than taking

a somewhat prissy position. But there are some things that are ethically in, and

some that are ethically out. "

 

Suzanne Weedman of the USGS said: " This is very much a part of what we do. Our

responsibility is to assess the undiscovered oil and gas using geological

information. " She said the plan built on a project called the Arctic Energy

Assessment, which is part of its World Energy Project - a global attempt to map

untapped hydrocarbon fuel reserves. Oil companies including ExxonMobil, Amoco,

Conoco, Texaco and PetroCanada are listed as members.

 

Ms Weedman said oil companies had helped fund the World Energy Project - which

had a budget of $2m (£1.1m) last year - but insisted they had no say on how the

money was spent and had not been involved in research. No company had

contributed funds directly to the Arctic Assessment, though some had donated

data as in-kind support. " If you look at the objectives of International Polar

Year, one of them is to assess the impact of these changes on people who live in

the Arctic. Knowing about the energy resources might be very interesting because

there is the potential of development in the Arctic. That's not for us to

decide, but it is the reality. "

 

A Statoil spokesman said: " It is not unnatural that our kind of contribution is

close to our activity, and that is finding and developing resources. " The

company was working on a gasfield in the Barents Sea, he said, but it had " no

concrete actions " elsewhere in the region.

 

BP said it was not using the research to prospect in the Arctic and that

geological surveys could be misleading: " Very often it's intended to get you an

indication, not necessarily of oil in a particular place, but what there might

be in adjacent areas. You only find oil and gas if you actually drill. "

 

 

 

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