Arctic Oil and Gas Drilling Has Started in Greenland’s Waters
02.09.2010 - Other, Arctic
Oil drilling started in Greenland's waters last week, opening up a new part of the Arctic to natural resource exploitation. With an estimated 13% of the world's remaining oil and 30 % of its gas, various multinational companies are interested in getting a share. As Arctic drilling presents multiple technical and logistical challenges, these companies have so far mostly concentrated on extracting resources in the more accessible parts of the Arctic, such as the waters close to shore or shallow regions of the sea.
While oil companies believe they have the ability to safely drill in the Arctic safely, no international protocols for dealing with an oil spill in the Arctic have been established. The main issue, however, are not the few tightly-controlled wells, but the oil tankers which will have to navigate through pack ice, storms and icebergs. Given oil spills would take decades to break down in the cold Arctic waters, environmental groups are calling for precaution.
Hwoever calls for an Arctic-wide moratorium on oil exploration until safety measures are in place have gone unheeded. Major oil companies have teamed up with Norway's independent research organisation SINTEF to find possible safety measures to deal with oil spills such as mechanical skimmers, dispersants and performing controlled burns on deliberately spilled oil, however results show they are still far from knowing how to cope.
