BP targets one of the world's last unspoilt wildernesses after deal

[Turborama]

Source: The Independent on Sunday

Environmentalists are angry at the energy giant's plans to drill for oil in a remote region of the Arctic

By Mark Leftly and Chris Stevenson
Sunday, January 16 2011

The Arctic is to become the "new environmental battleground", campaigners warned yesterday after BP announced plans to drill in one of the last great unspoilt wildernesses on earth. Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have vowed to confront BP's American boss, Bob Dudley, over the agreement with the Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft to explore the Kara Sea, north of Siberia. The British energy firm was branded the world's "environmental villain number one" by Friends of the Earth (FoE) yesterday in response to its move to exploit potential oil reserves in the remote waters.

Environmentalists are dismayed that BP, which announced the deal on Friday night, has decided to set up rigs in an area of great biodiversity and treacherous weather conditions. The region is one of the few remaining havens left for a number of endangered species, including polar bears, walruses and beluga whales. And while the waters of the Kara Sea are relatively unexplored, they are known to house key fish species such as halibut, capelin and Arctic cod.

The controversial decision to open the area up to oil drilling comes after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last April. The disaster wrecked BP's reputation, and campaigners are concerned that the remote Arctic is even more susceptible to environmental disasters.

Speaking to The Independent on Sunday yesterday, Mike Childs, FoE's head of climate change, said: "BP, a number of years ago, were positioning themselves to be the greenest of the oil companies, promising to go 'beyond petroleum'. This latest move positions them quite nicely as environmental villain number one, given the huge impact they had in the Gulf of Mexico as well."

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/bp-targets-one-of-the-worlds-last-unspoilt-wildernesses-after-deal-2185821.html

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(Lengthy article that's well worth reading in full)



Sara Wheeler: Why is Russia's Arctic closed to visitors? Who is hiding what?
I worry about Russian transparency when it comes to safety standards

Sunday, January 16 2011

The Russian Arctic is savage. I travelled across it to research my book on the Arctic Circle. My nostrils froze, one of my teeth exploded, and my exhaled breath fell in a tinkle of crystals. The region is so isolated that reindeer-herding residents refer to the rest of Russia as "the mainland". But the landscape is the most powerful I have ever seen: dazzling, pristine, a kind of biological haiku. I love the pared-down existence of polar lands and the grace of their peoples under pressure.

Chukotka is an Arctic region the size of Turkey in the Russian Far East (it's the bit Sarah Palin can see from Alaska). This magical slab of ice and tundra has no roads at all outside the capital, Anadyr. It took me two years to weasel my way in, but when I got there, I ran into President Medvedev. That morning he had stepped out of his helicopter to pat a reindeer and listen to some Chukchi folk songs in a local school. He was the first Russian head of state to bother; no tsar had ever come within a thousand miles. Five days previously, in a speech on Arctic policy to the Security Council in Moscow, Medvedev had flagged the reason for his visit. "This region," he said, "accounts for around 20 per cent of Russia's gross domestic product and 22 per cent of our national exports." He was talking about oil and gas. And now he wants more.

The emergence of the Arctic as an energy frontier has shunted the entire zone into public consciousness, and hydrocarbon extraction is certainly set to remain an economic driver across the polar lands, not just in Russia. I'm not going to stop burning up my own share, so it would be hypocritical of me to call for a drilling ban. But I hope we don't foul up one of our last true wildernesses.

I worry about Russian transparency when it comes to safety standards. Along the Murman coast in the Arctic I saw fuelled submarines lolling like beached killer whales, each one awaiting decommissioning that never comes. If Russia's lawless edge lingers anywhere, it is in the Arctic. The punishing climate makes protection hard, and the Russian record on its polar shelf is poor. A series of incidents at the Zapadnaya Litsa nuclear plant in the Eighties started when the concrete and steel lining of a spent fuel storage pool cracked. Radioactive waste water started to leak at a rate of 30 litres a day, soon reaching ten tonnes an hour. Yes, ten tonnes an hour.

More: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sara-wheeler-why-is-russias-arctic-closed-to-visitors-who-is-hiding-what-2185822.html

[cowcommander]

1. I doubt the Russians would care much about that

[BrklynLiberal]

2. One more corporation that does not give one tiny, little shit about the future of this planet..

The bottom line....the CURRENT bottom line is all that matters. As long as the profits and stock price go up, they are happy as pigs in shit. PERIOD. END OF STORY.

[pscot]

3. Arm the Rainbow Warrior

[onethatcares]

4. as I said in an earlier post,

when something goes wrong with this plan, the Russians and BP will quickly run away and act like nothing is going on. I mean look at the Chernobyl "accident" the Russian were all over that, and that's when they had a government. With billions of rubles being shoveled at some mid level manager, how much oversight do you think is going to go on?

I hope the Mayans were correct in their predictions or at least Nostradamus and his.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

5. I wonder if Tony "I want my life back" Hayward is involved

He got sent to BP's Russia operation, but I haven't heard anything about him since then

http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-hayward-is-heading-to-bps-russia-operation-2010-7

:hi: