Oil Drill in Arctic- Possible Dangers and Hazards

• 05.13.2015, 21:50
•  America,  World

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/5-dangers-of-oil-drilling-in-the-arctic-ocean

The U.S. President Obama administration gave Shell conditional approval to drill oil in  Arctic. It is known that the area is rich in oil, but it is not the reason to start mass oil production in the "Earth’s oasis". Estimations showed that Arctic possesses 13 persent of Earth’s undiscovered oil resources, which is about 90 billion barrels. According to the current rate of world consumption, that would be enough to meet worldwide demand for about tree years. But it is not a case to employ the resources covered in North Pole. There are a lot of  reasons for not letting to start drilling in Arctic, but ecologists point out five most important ones, MNN reports.

The first concern refers to the noise that would be unavoidable. Each phase of oil development in the Arctic Ocean referred to exploration, drilling, production platforms, pipelines, terminals and exporting process that have noise pollution effect. This can have big negative impact on the environment of the area. Underwater noise can affect on mammals’ (whales, seals and walrus) communication, migration, feeding, mating and other functions. Noise pollution has negative impact also on bird and fish migration, feeding and reproduction functions.

The second reason refers to the remoteness. It concerns to the cases if oil spill happen. It will be very difficult task to get the necessary ships and equipments to Arctic in order to stop the spill and renew the broken stuff. The damages caused to the environment will be the most difficult to recover.

The sea ice is the third reason to realize that oil drilling in Arctic is not beneficial. As it is mentioned above the clean up process after spill will be much more difficult in this area because of the ice in the Ocean. World Wildlife Fund pointed out that there is no proven effective method for containing or cleaning up an oil spill in icy water. 

The forth reason is slow ecological recovery of the area. The low temperature and limited sunlight will slowdown the recovery temp if oil spill occurs in the North. Some species of mammals are already under the treat of extinction; the spill could cause the final disappear of them from the Earth. Moreover oil would persist in the North environment for years because of the low temperature and slow degradation rates.

The fifth problem is the emissions. As it is pointed out above, the capacity of Arctic is totaled 90 barrels of oil and it may hold 1.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. But the transportation of natural gas is much more difficult than for the oil. It can be shipped by tankers which is sparse in the Arctic. So, it means that offshore rigs could be burn off the extra natural gas, the process that flaring could produce other pollution like black carbon. That could cause snow and ice melt, which is hazardous for Arctic environment.

As it is visible the losses are more from the Arctic oil drilling that the benefits, which could cover only 30 percent of worldwide demand only for three years. But the damages of the environment will be covered during unlimited time and most of the species will be lost forever.

The U.S. government and other countries that are interested in oil production in the North is better for them to invest so much money for investigation of new resources of fuel than to damage the environment that cannot be recovered. The new recourse of fuel can be the recycling of plastic bags and bottles that are another type of nature pollution.