DENVER AND THE WEST
Gulf oil spill fuels Alaska village's fears over offshore drilling
By Mark Jaffe and David Olinger
The Denver Post
POSTED: 08/29/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
UPDATED: 08/29/2010 09:47:29 AM MDT
Point Hope Alaska native, Michael Dirks, 31-years-old, left, works with his son, Dmitri, 8-years-old, right, to pull in a fishing net, collecting Silver Salmon, while fishing in the Chukchi Sea in the Arctic Ocean on July 26, 2010. (Andy Cross | The Denver Post)
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POINT HOPE, Alaska — When the whaling crews of this Arctic village landed a 50-ton bowhead whale in June, almost the entire community of 700 Inupiat Eskimos went onto the windswept ice to load the whale meat onto sleds.
While the Inupiat were following a tradition at least 2,500 years old, entire fishing fleets in the Gulf of Mexico sat idle as a blown-out BP well spewed 5 million barrels of oil.
The catastrophe in the gulf was not lost on Point Hope, which for six years has battled offshore drilling in the Arctic's Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
"That spill in the gulf, it could have been our ocean," said Mayor Daisy Sharp. "It's sad to say, but in a way I'm glad it happened. Maybe now people will take a closer
AUDIO SLIDESHOW
Watch an audio slideshow of Point Hope.
look at offshore oil drilling."
Shell Exploration and Production Co. was set to start exploratory drilling this summer — until the gulf spill and a U.S. Department of the Interior drilling moratorium.
"We recognize there are issues in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, which is why we canceled drilling this summer," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in an interview.
Shell, which has spent $2.2 billion for Arctic leases, is pressing to start drilling next summer.
After the gulf, Alaska holds the largest offshore oil reserves in the nation — an estimated 27 billion barrels, more than double the Atlantic and Pacific coasts combined.
"From an economic and energy independence perspective, Alaska is important to the nation," said Peter Slaiby, a Shell vice president.
The Alaska dilemma is that unlike the gulf, where about 50,000 wells have been drilled in the past 63 years, the Arctic is a largely untouched — and unknown — environment.
Salazar has announced that the federal Minerals Management Service, which regulated offshore oil drilling, is being split into three agencies to issue leases, collect royalties and inspect offshore operations.
The name
Point Hope native, Eunice L. Lane holds her son, Lennie, 3-years-old, who fell asleep in her arms, at her home in point Hope Alaska on July 26, 2010. (Andy Cross | The Denver Post)
has been changed to the Bureau of Offshore Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.
"That's a start, but more needs to be done," said Marilyn Heiman, director of Pew Environment's Arctic program. Alaska, she said, offers a "road map for reform."
The issues raised by Point Hope and other Inupiat and environmental groups parallel many of the problems that were uncovered in the gulf after BP's record spill.
Among those that emerge in MMS documents, agency e-mails and lawsuits, as well as interviews with current and former MMS employees, are:
• Systematic efforts to lower risk estimates for spills and environmental impacts.
• Flaws in planning and leasing documents that led courts to order
Tribal Heritage.Eunice Lane holds son Lennie, 3, asleep in her arms. "I want him to be able to fish, to hunt. I don't want any offshore drilling." (Andy Cross | The Denver Post)
them to be revised.
• Clashes between agency biologists and engineers and an overriding concern on meeting deadlines for lease sales.
• Questions about how realistic spill-cleanup plans are and how efficiently a spill can be cleaned in the frigid and often ice-choked Arctic waters.
Bureau officials in Alaska and industry executives say the leasing process has been open and rigorous and point to the $600 million in federal environmental studies done to better understand the Arctic.
"Almost every deadline has been missed," said Jeffrey Loman, the bureau's deputy regional director in Anchorage, "and the reason is because we took time to respond to issues that were raised."
Efforts also were made
Point Hope Alaska native, Lillian Lane's salmon fish in her homemade smoke house behind her house on July 26, 2010. The (Andy Cross | The Denver Post)
to address the concerns of Point Hope and the seven other Inupiat villages of the North Slope, Loman said.
MMS and Shell officials — including Loman and Slaiby — made trips to Point Hope and the other Inupiat villages to discuss offshore plans.
"Government officials and Shell would come up here and say there is no chance of a spill," Mayor Sharp said. "Now that has changed. Everyone knows it can happen."
Outsiders covet oil
A cluster of about 200 small, weathered houses, Point Hope sits on a spit of gravel and tundra that juts into the Chukchi Sea 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in North America, it has a story dating
A diagram of how a whale is divided up after it is hauled onto shore after a whale hunt in Point Hope Alaska on July 27, 2010. (Andy Cross | The Denver Post)
to at least 500 B.C.
The Inupiat of Point Hope hunted whales while the Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. Artifacts date initial settlers to 4,000 to 6,000 B.C.
Point Hope's story took a dramatic turn in May 2001 when then-President George W. Bush issued an executive order to "expedite" energy development.
That September, the MMS Alaska office announced the state's first-ever multiple lease sale in the Beaufort Sea.
In 2003, the first Beaufort lease sale raised $8.9 million.
The following year, MMS requested a government-to-government meeting with the Native Village of Point Hope Council to tell them leases in the Chukchi Sea were next.
"Our ancestors had seen the hunger for oil when the Yankee whalers came in the 19th century," said Steve Oomittuk, who was vice president of the council.
"They came for the whale oil and wiped out the whales. Whole villages disappeared," Oomittuk said. "Then six years ago we saw the hunger for oil coming back. We started to think this time we would go extinct."
From the first meeting with MMS, Point Hope tribal leaders voiced opposition to offshore oil drilling and asked questions federal officials deflected or did not answer.
" 'We can't answer that question. We don't have that information, but we'll get back to you.' That's what they'd tell us," said Jack Schaefer, who was council president.
"We'd never get an answer, but we were also told there was no problem, no risk," Schaefer said.
Clear answers were hard to come by.
Spill risks suddenly shrink
In April 2002, MMS estimated in a five-year national offshore drilling plan that there was up to a 94 percent chance of an oil spill of 500 barrels or more in the Arctic.
Five months later, when the agency issued a draft environmental impact statement for the Beaufort lease sale, it put the risk of a 1,000-barrel spill at no more than 10 percent.
The odds of a major blowout — such as the one in the gulf — weren't calculated.
In a 540-page environmental impact statement, MMS 160 times called a large oil spill an "unlikely event."
"What has changed since April?" asked a coalition of 11 environmental groups in comments filed with MMS in 2002. "What is this based on?"
MMS had hired a Canadian consultant, the Bercha Group, which used a set of risk factors to conclude that drilling off the Alaska coast was safer than drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
The environmental groups protested that the new risk estimates conflicted with MMS's five-year plan, "and drastically downplay the chances of spills."
Frank Bercha, the MMS consultant, said there are reasons Arctic Ocean drilling should be less risky than Gulf of Mexico drilling: no hurricanes, shorter pipelines, shallower waters, fewer passing ships to damage pipelines or rigs.
The Arctic, however, presents unique problems — dark, harsh winters, broken ice, fog and storms almost as fierce as hurricanes, said Leslie Pearson, former manager of the Alaska state offshore-oil-spill response program.
"MMS looked for ways to minimize the risk of spills, of anything that could raise concerns about a lease sale," said Erik Grafe, the Earthjustice lawyer who represented Point Hope.
On Feb. 6, 2008, MMS held the Chukchi auction, leasing 2.7 million acres for $2.7 billion. Shell, with $2.1 billion, was the top bidder.
Villagers live off ocean life
It is drilling's impact on walruses, whales and all the marine life of the Arctic that worries the Inupiat the most.
"The ocean is our garden," said Oomittuk. "All our traditions revolve around whaling. If we lose that, we lose everything."
In February and March, the women of Point Hope stitch fresh, bearded seal skins over the driftwood frames of 16-foot-long whale boats.
In April, men and women haul the village's 16 boats onto the ice to find a "lead" into the Chukchi.
Then the eight-man crews paddle out looking for 50-foot-long, 50-ton bowhead whales and 15-foot, 3,000-pound beluga whales.
"Being the first boat, the one that harpoons the whale, is a big honor," Oomittuk said. "The other boats come, and we work together."
The vanquished whale is hauled up on the ice by hand, using a block and tackle. The crew works night and day to cut up and pack the meat.
"Sea gulls, foxes, polar bears are always circling, waiting on the edges for what's left, but there isn't much," Oomittuk said.
The bounty will, among other things, provide Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.
The Point Hope hunt is followed by a three-day feast. "The last day, 400 or 500 hundred people pack the school gym and we dance all night," Oomittuk said.
Concerns get downsized
The whales may be the Inupiat's biggest concern, but not the only one. There are also questions about the salmon, tomcod, walruses, seals and the occasional polar bear Point Hope families depend upon.
What would be the impact of seismic surveys that fire loud air cannons into the water, the increased sea and air traffic, drilling, a spill? Again, finding answers was difficult.
A 2006 evaluation of the impact of a spill on fish in the Beaufort Sea by MMS biologist Jeff Childs concluded that a large spill "is likely to result in significant adverse effects on local populations requiring three or more generations to recover."
For pink salmon it took more than six generations to recover after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Childs noted.
The problem with Childs' analysis, for MMS managers, was that it would lead to a "finding of significant impact" — and under federal law require a detailed and public environmental impact statement.
"That would, as you can imagine, not go over well w/ HQ & others," Paul Stang, the regional head of leasing, wrote to Childs.
Agency e-mails show the pressure was on to complete lease sales.
"There is absolutely no slack time in the current schedule," one agency official wrote to his staff. "The Alaska Region of MMS has worked hard to meet the director's commitment to industry and to maintain the sale schedule."
Childs, who is no longer with the agency, did not change his report. A manager did, making the Arctic salmon a subgroup of a larger population — thus reducing the risk.
The lease sale's final environmental assessment — which did not need public review — said effects of a spill would be "moderate."
"One year of salmon smolt would be affected, and salmon populations likely would recover," the assessment said.
MMS marine biologist Lisa Rotterman raised concerns about the impact of seismic survey air guns on whale feeding areas.
"It is not benign to remove whole segments of habitat," she wrote.
Biologist James Wilder worried that an oil spill could be deadly to polar bears. If there was a spill, large polar bear populations "are likely to be greased," he warned.
Yet the final environmental analyses for Chukchi and Beaufort sea lease sales said drilling would cause no significant harm to whales or polar bears.
"The aim was not to find a significant impact," said Stan Senner, who oversaw science studies on the Exxon Valdez spill and is now conservation science director for the Ocean Conservancy.
"MMS in its studies has tried to put in the minimum information to satisfy legal requirements and to issue a lease," Senner said.
Loman, the regional deputy director, said the internal exchanges on risks to fish, polar bears and whales were simply part of "the debate and discussion" among scientists.
Stang, who left MMS and served as a consultant for Shell, did not return a call from comment.
The experience in the gulf was not much different, said Hammond Eve, a former MMS regional leasing and environment administrator in the gulf.
"The goal is to minimize risk and to only deal with what's likely," Eve said. "They keep minimizing everything until there is nothing to sink your teeth into."
One spill could take it all
Once the whale hunt is done, the people of Point Hope hunt bearded seals, walruses, and caribou, fish for salmon and tomcod and gather salmon berries.
The catch is placed in a siglaq — an ice cellar dug 12 to 14 feet into the permafrost — or dried and smoked.
On a clear evening — the endless summer sun still high in the sky — Lillian Lane was in her gravel yard feeding bright orange strips of salmon into a smoking, wooden box.
"This is all a gift. The fish, the whales, every living creature we depend on. It's God's gift," she said.
In her kitchen, Lane cut up dark red whale meat, white whale blubber, pale bits of beluga and smoked salmon and tomcod.
"This is our tradition, and there is no place else you can do it," Lane said. "So we worry that with one offshore drilling accident, all this will be gone."
More than 70 percent of Point Hope households get half their food or more from subsistence resources, according to the tribal government.
Everything not hunted or gathered has to be flown or barged in. There are no roads.
At the Point Hope Native Store, a 10-ounce can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup is $3.24, a 17-ounce box of Froot Loops is $8.89 and a half-gallon of milk is $6.39.
Gasoline — to fuel the few trucks and the legion of all-terrain vehicles that are the main form of transportation — sold for $4.80 a gallon in July.
The prices are, in Point Hope vernacular, "spendy."
Oil money rebuilds village
Around 1976, storms and erosion forced Point Hope to relocate its village down the peninsula closer to the mainland.
Many of the homes left behind were built of whale bones and sod. Some did not have electricity and burned whale and seal blubber for heat.
Tax revenues from North Slope oil development helped build a new village with frame houses, a municipal building, power and water plants, and a new school.
"There has to be a balance," said Herbert Kinneeveauk Jr., executive vice president of the native Tikigaq Corp. — which runs the store and has construction, freight and native crafts subsidiaries.
"Oil development hasn't been all bad for the North Slope," said Kinneeveauk, who is also a whaling captain.
There has to be some way to "create some opportunity for the next generation," he said.
Shell waiting to drill 5 wells
Shell has been in Alaska for five years, has spent $3.5 billion and has yet to drill a well.
The company was set to drill two wells in the Chukchi and three in the Beaufort this summer, before the blowout at BP's Macondo well and the drilling moratorium.
"We aren't here to dine and dash," said Slaiby, the Shell vice president. Still, the company is pressing to get "clarity" from the Interior Department on when it can drill.
It has also tried to open lines of communication with the Inupiat villages on the North Slope, Slaiby said.
"Shell said we can do it no matter what, but we want the people involved," Oomittuk said. "They came to the tribe. They came to the city."
Slaiby said discussions led to Shell making changes in its plans, including cutting the number of drill ships from two to one, switching to low-sulfur fuel, restricting vessel movements and timing activity to avoid whale- hunting seasons.
The wells also would be drilled in 250 feet of water or less, compared with 5,000 feet for the BP well, and under a third of the pressure.
"It is entirely different from the gulf," Slaiby said.
That isn't enough, said Caroline Cannon, Point Hope tribal council president. "We've been fighting this from Day One — no drilling," she said.
Conflicts inside MMS
One thing that wasn't different from the gulf was the conflict between biologists doing environmental reviews and the agency's petroleum engineers and geologists, according to current and former MMS employees from the two regions.
MMS had three divisions. Field Operations, or FO, engineers issued permits and inspected rigs. Resource Evaluation, or RE, geologists oversaw seismic surveys, and Leasing and Environmental, or LE, biologists did the environment assessments.
The biological evaluations have been targets of both the geologists and the engineers.
On a proposed Chukchi Sea lease, the Alaska head of Resource Evaluation went through a report page by page with the biologist, seeking to minimize wildlife risks.
"He'd asked, 'Why does this have to be in here?' or, 'Why can't we take this out?' " said the biologist, who now works for another federal agency and asked not to be named.
Polar bear biologist Wilder complained in a 2007 e-mail: "Shell did not bother to address the polar bear issues that were raised during the 'completeness' review, and the FO deemed this acceptable."
In the Gulf of Mexico, Field Operations controlled the flow of information between MMS and companies, said Eve, the former regional administrator.
"The entire environmental office was subservient to the engineers," Eve said. "The engineering side of MMS is under the thumb of industry."
A goal of the reorganization of MMS is to deal with possible conflicts of interest, said Assistant Interior Secretary Tom Strickland. "That review is underway, and all this is being sorted out," he said.
Challenges to spill cleanup
While there are many questions and worries, the biggest fear in Point Hope is an oil spill — a big one.
The question is can a spill be contained, can it be cleaned up?
Shell has filed a spill response plan, more detailed than those in the gulf.
The hull of its drill ship Frontier Discoverer has been ice-reinforced, and an oil-spill response fleet would be on standby near the drill sites.
The fleet includes an oil-spill response ship, an oil-spill response barge, an Arctic tanker, skimming and work boats, minibarges and helicopters.
With the closest Coast Guard base 1,000 miles from the Beaufort sites, Shell's responders have to be "on-site," said Shell spokesman Curtis Smith.
The Shell fleet would include up to 16 vessels, Smith said. In July more than 100 ships were involved in cleanup in the gulf.
From November to April, the Arctic Ocean is frozen solid and plunged in darkness, making cleanup work impossible.
As the ice gives way to open water, Arctic fog moves in and strong winds whip up waves and push broken ice. In October and November, strong storms blow in from the north.
"There are very few calm days in the Arctic Ocean," said Pearson, the former manager of Alaska's offshore oil-spill response program.
Shell's spill-response plan notes that seas 6 feet or higher and broken ice could undermine cleanup. Yet it estimates it might be able to capture up to 90 percent of a 5,500-barrel spill off the Alaska coast.
Tim Robertson, an Anchorage-based spill-management consultant, said capturing 8 percent to 10 percent is what most cleanups manage.
In Alaska, it would take a Coast Guard ship a week to make it to an Arctic spill, Capt. J.J. Fisher, chief of the Coast Guard's Office of Policy Integration, told a conference in June.
"I won't speak for industry, although my personal opinion is it applies to industry too, the Coast Guard is not well-prepared for a major oil spill, such as we've seen in the gulf, in Alaska," Fisher said.
Going to court for answers
In the past five years, Point Hope representatives have turned up in the courts and lobbying in Congress.
At least nine lawsuits have been filed challenging lease sales and environmental plans — with Point Hope the lead plaintiff in most of the cases.
"The lawsuits are just one more way of trying to get answers to our questions," said Lily Tuzroyluke, executive director of the Point Hope tribal government.
Still, the questions remain, and in February 2009, the Point Hope tribal council submitted 16 of them to the MMS.
"They'd been asked over and over again, year after year," said Tuzroyluke. "So we set them down."
Chief among them:
• How would the bowhead whales be affected in their migration both in spring and fall?
• What technology exists to clean up oil spilled under the ice?
"To date we haven't received an answer," Tuzroyluke said.
Schaefer, the former council president, has his own question:
"How do you catch, clean and release a walrus that's been covered with oil?" he asked. "I don't think anyone can answer that because it has never been done."
Read more: Gulf oil spill fuels Alaska village's fears over offshore drilling - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_15928501#ixzz0y1SZJIBS
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