By Brendan Joel Kelley
On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up off the coast of Louisiana, sinking and killing 11 people, causing an unprecedented oil spill that continues to gush a month and half later, despite several attempts to contain the flow. Clean up attempts seem to still be in the beginning phases in the Gulf of Mexico, as attention is primarily focused on quelling the spill.
On May 6, Mead Treadwell of the Institute of the North, and Chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission (USARC), tendered his resignation from the commission in a letter to President Obama (Treadwell quit the commission in order to run in the Republican lieutenant governor primary). In the letter, Treadwell expresses frustration that a particular call for action by USARC regarding oil spill research has been virtually ignored by the federal government.
“The Commission has repeatedly warned that the nation’s oil spill research program has been whittled down to almost nothing. We have sought robust research for the Arctic and the nation that was promised in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to help make spill response faster, more practical, and effective. While we and other nations explore deeper in the Gulf and further offshore in the Arctic Ocean, we have not kept up with research goals the nation has set. Yet eight cents a barrel collected now from every barrel produced or used in the U.S. has built a fund which could fund research to reduce spill risks. Washington can no longer ignore this. Coastal residents in the Gulf, Alaska and other parts of the Arctic could pay a heavy price for this negligence.”
Treadwell says he hasn’t received a formal response to his resignation letter, but the commission would be discussing it at its meeting—his last—in Washington, D.C. this week. President George W. Bush appointed Treadwell to USARC in 2001.
USARC is a federal commission responsible for promoting Arctic research and setting policy goals and communicating those to the president and Congress. In February, months before the Deepwater Horizon blowout, USARC released a brief draft of a white paper recommending certain steps to expand funding and research for Arctic and Sub-Arctic oil spill response. An eight-page final draft of the white paper was released to the Press last week.
The report makes a list of recommendations for “priority actions.”
“These priorities, and the actions that they support, are timely,” it reads. “If the debate on offshore exploration in America’s Arctic, specifically the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, was not enough to make these proposals timely, the 2010 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico is. This disaster has the potential to cause severe environmental and economic effects in the Southeastern United States, despite the fact that it happened in a temperate region with substantial and proximal spill response infrastructure. We hope now the United States will commit to funding a long-term, appropriate and robust spill research program that also contains a component that focuses on Arctic waters.”
An Arctic oil spill would be different from other spills. There are the cold temperatures, the lack of daylight and the variety of ice types in Arctic waters.
Basic functions that take place in the immediate aftermath of a spill—mapping the oil, for example—would be harder to perform.
And according to USARC, since the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which was a response to the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, little progress has been made in ways to locate and clean up oil under ice.
A 2004 report by USARC and the Prince William Sound Oil Spill Recovery Institute entitled “Advancing oil spill response in ice-covered waters” identified the many challenges such a spill would incur. Variables such as whether the spill is in pack ice, stable ice extending out from the shore or on an ice-covered shoreline require different responses.
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 mandated that companies have plans to both prevent and clean up oil spills. It set rules for liability and compensation, and established the Prince William Sound Oil Recovery Institute and the Interagency Coordinating Committee on Oil Pollution Research, which was charged with writing an Arctic-specific oil spill research plan.
That was 20 years ago.
Experiments in the 1970s and early 1980s established in-situ burning as the most effective recovery method in ice covered waters. Dispersants such as Corexit, which was used on shore after the Exxon Valdez spill and has been used in the Gulf spill, weren’t seen as effective for icy waters because the lack of natural mixing energy. It’s been theorized that icebreakers or other vessels could introduce the necessary mixing energy. But that research hasn’t been done in the U.S.
The most significant oil-in-ice research conducted since the 2004 report was by SINTEF, a Scandinavian organization based in Norway. Its final conclusions haven’t been published, but it conducted its Joint Industry Program for Oil in Ice between 2006 and 2009, and USARC participated in workshops with SINTEF.
“The SINTEF program includes everything from a unique program that could be done here in Alaska using dogs with smart noses to look for oil under rocks and on beaches; that’s the low end of the spectrum,” Treadwell says. “At the high-tech end of the spectrum, they’ve been trying to test new forms of bioremediation, new forms of herding agents, testing dispersants, using ice as a herding agent, and other mechanical means of cleaning it up.”
SINTEF had the opportunity to conduct controlled spills during the course of its research, which is a recommendation USARC makes in its white paper; currently the U.S. does not issue permits for controlled spills. With this ability, SINTEF was able to, for the first time, test dispersants in broken ice, and determined them to be effective. Corralling oil with fire-resistant booms and burning it in-situ was also found to be a valuable technique.
“The point is finding oil in the dark and in the ice, that’s a case where people would like to see their confidence grow,” Treadwell says. “I’m not an expert on where the holes are, but as with virtually every human endeavor, if you don’t have a research and development component, you’re not going to get better. This is a case where we can point to that major SINTEF work in the Arctic and we can point to Canada’s work, but we can’t point to any long term continuity in a U.S. oil spill research program.”
The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 directed that the Interagency Coordinating Committee on Oil Pollution Research (ICCOPR), chaired by the U.S. Coast Guard, would produce an Arctic-specific oil spill research plan. That plan still does not exist. “The Coast Guard told us that while they saw the need for it, they weren’t getting the support of the Department of Homeland Security because there’s a much greater emphasis for research and development at the Coast Guard on the very important task of keeping nuclear bombs out of the United States after 9/11,” Treadwell says. “So in some ways oil spill research was a casualty of 9/11.”
One of USARC’s white paper recommendations is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration co-chair ICCOPR with the Coast Guard, because of the agency’s extensive experience in conducting scientific research. It also calls for increased funding for research, $30 to $50 million a year, with $8 to $10 million dedicated to Alaska, and asks for legislation directing the Department of Justice to ensure fines and penalties for oil spills are allocated for spill research.
The document also supports Democratic Alaska Senator Mark Begich’s S.1564, the Arctic Oil Spill Research and Prevention Act of 2009, which would fund research to look at gaps in the current spill response and prevention research.
There are over 600 active leases in Alaska’s outer continental shelf waters currently, but in addition to concern about a Deepwater Horizon-esque spill, new shipping and fishing vessels moving further north as lanes in the Arctic sea ice open provide new risks for spills from ships.
In the wake of the Gulf spill, Treadwell is optimistic the White House and Congress will take a serious look at the issue of research into Arctic oil spills.
“I believe our white paper is timely,” he says.
In a nutshell, the white paper suggests expanding ICCOPR to establish a new advisory committee comprised of two arms, one general and one scientific; that a regional fund specific to the Arctic be established; instituting a dedicated funding stream for research; and waiving restrictions that prevent experimental spills.
“The Commission concludes that federal oil spill research efforts for Arctic conditions are fragmented, uncoordinated, under-funded, and in dire, immediate need of improvement,” the paper concludes.
“One thing I’ve learned in almost ten years on [USARC] is not all good ideas are accepted at once, and every one finds its time,” Treadwell says. “This one has its time.”
bjk@anchoragepress.com
Read USARC's White Paper on Arctic Oil Spill Research here
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