Call to halt Arctic oil rush amid fear of spills
LONDON: International governments should seek a moratorium on offshore drilling in the Arctic amid concern that an oil spill in the region could cause catastrophic environmental damage, British MPs said yesterday.
The Environmental Audit Committee of Britain’s House of Commons urged action to halt oil and gas drilling in the Arctic until new safeguards – including vastly increased financial guarantees and universal standards on disaster response – were put in place.
Legislators on the panel also called for an internationally recognised nature sanctuary to be set up to protect at least part of the Arctic from energy exploration.
Caroline Lucas, a committee member and the only Green Party lawmaker in Britain’s Parliament, said the panel’s findings came as “the race to carve up the Arctic is accelerating faster than our regulatory or technical capacity to manage it”.
“The Arctic oil rush is bringing unprecedented risks to the area, and it’s now clear that the consequences of any potential oil spill would be catastrophic,” she said.
Recommendations by panel are not binding the on Britain’s government, and in response the country’s foreign ministry said only that it would consider the proposals.
Experts warned the panel that any blowout in the Arctic at the end of the summer drilling season could be disastrous, as the returning winter ice would likely probably hamper the response.
“We heard compelling evidence that if a blowout occurred just before the dark Arctic winter returned it may not be possible to cap it until the next summer – potentially leaving oil spewing out under the ice for six months or more with devastating consequences for wildlife,” said lawmaker Joan Walley, chairwoman of the committee.
In a report, MPs said that because Arctic drilling locations were remote resources to manage accidents were likely to be difficult to access or unavailable. Because shorelines were sparsely populated, it would also be more difficult to detect evidence of a spill.
“The infrastructure to mount a big clean-up operation is simply not in place and conventional oil spill response techniques have not been proven to work in such severe conditions,” Walley said. – Sapa-AP