3.12 Current oil spill recovery systems for oil in ice
A study done in Canada by Look North named ‘Oil Spill Detection and Modelling in Hudson and Davis Straits’ (2014) summarizes how in most oil spill models available, sea ice is not a factor, and for the studies where it is added, the risks are down-played and over-simplified. There is a good body of knowledge on how to retrieve oil in tempered water, but limited on how oil behaves in cold water. The field research on Arctic oil spill is also limited, and a knowledge gap remains connected to the challenges surrounding ice.
3.13 Oil spill surveillance in Arctic waters
The SINTEF report ‘The Utilization of Satellite Images for the Oil in Ice Experiment in the Barents Sea, May 2009’, funded by the 6 oil companies; Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni Agip Kco, Statoil, Shell and Total, describe how a combination of aerial and satellite surveillance has become the preferred method for monitoring off shore areas where an oil spill could occur in open waters. The aim was to test if the same conditions applied for the Barents Sea. This report was the outcome of a joint industry program with the aim to learn more about how oil behaves in ice covered waters. After several tests where oil was spilt under controlled conditions it was found that if the ice density was higher than 40%, it was impossible to trace an oil spill that had occurred under the ice with the current satellite monitoring. This caused concern as this means that it is not only no oil spill recovery system that is currently available that would be able to collect spilled oil, but an oil spill will neither be possible to spot, as the concentration of ice in the Barents Sea can be over 40% all year around, and with most of the year it is a certainty that it will be frozen near the Polar Front and the Ice Edge.
4.0 Results and Analysis
This chapter aims at drawing conclusions from the main body of data and analyzes the findings from the case study in light of the literature review.
4.1 Implications of Research Findings
In question 5 of the case study when I asked ‘Has anyone informed specifically about the risks of an oil spill for you who live close to the South-East Barents Sea?’ and the unanimous answer was ‘No’ could be an indicator towards that the Coastal Sámi I interviewed could have received such information from the Sámi Parliament, but this dissertation claims that even the Sámi Parliament can not have been given adequate information on this, as there are no scientific solutions on how to treat an oil spill in ice covered waters. This breaks with The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that Norway has signed on the ‘Principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent’.
4.2 Conclusions
When treating land and sea resources where indigenous communities are involved it is necessary to meet the indigenous on their terms. The ocean holds a great value to the Coastal Sámi inhabitants, both as the primary source of food, but with a strong sense of identity being connected to the continuous living near the ocean. The planned oil activity in the South-East Barents Sea will pose a threat already under safe practice, as the seismic shooting the Norwegian oil industry uses in order to locate oil wells have a negative effect on larvae and fry that are to spend the first part of their lives in these areas. Among a limited amount of research on the effects on other fish species than cod and larger sea mammals from seismic shooting, there is still not a finished mapping of the sea bottom, which makes it impossible to predict further consequences of the marine life before 2020 when the sea bottom report is estimated to be finished. Large scale oil spill recovery test were made in the Barents Sea on a joint program by 6 oil companies that own oil concessions in the Arctic to test if the methods they had developed could be used in cleaning oil from ice covered waters. The results concluded that they had learnt a great deal from the experiments, but there are still many insecurities, both regarding how the oil changes and behaves in such cold waters, but the greatest gap in knowledge remains on how to extract oil that is trapped under or between the ice. The part of the oil spill program that regarded monitoring of oil under ice concluded that a higher ice density than 40% makes it impossible to spot the oil from under the ice when satellite monitoring is used, which is the preferred method for detecting oil spills in open waters.
4.2.1 Recommendations based on key findings
Based on the key findings from both the case study and the literature review this dissertation recommends to decision makers, in this case the state of Norway:
- An Arctic Legal Treaty should be drawn up specifically regarding the topic of how natural resources in and around the sea should be distributed between the Sámi population and the non-indigenous population of Norway.
- As the sea bottom of the Barents Sea is currently being mapped by Mareano, and this report is estimated to be finalized in 2020, this dissertation recommends that no oil license allocations are made before this process is finalized so marine habitat can be preserved and important natural values will be saved.
- The IPCC estimates that the climate emissions needs to decrease 85% within 2050, and 40% within 2020 in order to avoid a temperature increase on more than 2 degrees celsius, and in order for Norway to achieve this, who has set out to reduced their national emissions with 20% within 2020, even Statoil's manager Helge Lund has said that it is a necessary to leave some of the oil reservoirs unexplored. This dissertation recommend that these areas are the South-East Barents Sea areas.
4.3 Literature and methodological discussion
The literature of this dissertation was gathered in the request of highlighting as broadly as possible how Arctic oil drilling is a new policy step for Norway as an oil nation, and how prior knowledge from more southern latitudes will not be sufficient to safely drill for oil in the Arctic regions of Norway. The aim was to highlight the Coastal Sámi’s perspective on the consequences of an oil spill in their close environment. My chosen method was to contact Coastal Sámis as individual persons, not the organizations that represent them. The organizations were contacted, but only to ask if members were willing to participate. This might have been a flaw of the study, and more politically engaged members of the Sámi community could maybe have been a part of the study if they spoke on behalf of their organizations. Another methodological concern is the decision to not consult ‘experts’ from outside the Sámi community. The study could have been broadened by adding a closer perspective from academics working on issues concerning Sámi rights. Additional depth could have been gained if glaciologists and biologists who specialize in how oil affects the nature were consulted directly, and not only through academic sources. However, from the case study that was executed the answers served a great purpose of highlighting the same concerns that the scientific community raises.