Photo by Vladimir Gorbunov.

 The government’s decision to delay listing the polar bear as threatened is certainly getting a lot of press – and thankfully, the press is linking the polar bear to the government’s incomprehensible decision to move forward with oil and gas lease sales in the Chukchi Sea. 

Check out the following links for some great editorials on the subject: 

Regulatory Games and the Polar Bear (The New York Times) 

Polar Bears:  Stop Oil, Gas Leases (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Protecting Polar Bears (The Los Angeles Times) 

The Threatened Polar Bear (The Washington Post) 

Meanwhile, Congressman Ed Markey is holding a hearing about the polar bear and the Chukchi Lease Sale in the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.  The hearing is at 9:30 Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, January 17.  The panel will be broadcast over the internet for those interested:  It can be accessed by going tohttp://globalwarming.house.gov/home and clicking on the box next to the picture of Ed Markey on the left hand side.  The box reads “Next Hearing–Polar Bears on Thin Ice- Thurs. Jan. 17 at 9:30am” 

If anyone has trouble with that link they can also try here. 

Let’s hope that Minerals Management Service is paying attention and chooses to delay the Chukchi Lease Sales! 

Our policy director Doug Norlen recently attended the Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel meeting as an observer.  This panel, known as “WGWAP” for short, was set up by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and Shell/Sakhalin Energy to make recommendations to minimize the impacts from oil and gas development around Sakhalin on critically endangered Western Gray Whales.  The primary feeding ground for Western Gray Whales is directly adjacent to Sakhalin Energy’s drilling area and two offshore platforms.  The whales are impacted from noise, construction activities, ship traffic, and potentially by oil spills. 

The idea behind the panel is a good one:  let’s bring together some of the best scientists in the world to review Shell’s plans and make recommendations to make sure that it minimizes the harm to Western Gray Whales.  This would work, if Shell took the panel’s recommendations seriously.  Unfortunately, when push comes to shove, Shell just does what it wants and ignores the panel’s recommendations. 

This is especially apparent on noise issues.  For over a year now, the panel’s scientists have asked Shell to use a certain set of noise criteria.  Shell has refused, saying this is unnecessary and could lead to shutdowns in their operations and delays of their construction schedules.  But isn’t the idea here to protect the critically endangered western gray whales?  Shell’s refusal means that it can create noise “spikes” without shutting down its operations.  Yet clearly this is not to the benefit of the whales. 

Environmentalists who were observing the construction this summer warned that a lot of noise in early July appeared to be frightening the whales away.  Shell says that its acoustic recordings either weren’t working or didn’t pick up the noise.  But since Shell refuses to abide by the panel’s reasonable recommendations, there’s no way to be sure.  Unfortunately, IUCN appears to have too close of a financial relationship with Shell to hold the company’s feet to the fire.  Meanwhile, potential public lenders, including the export credit agencies of the US, UK and Japan, have set adherence to the WGWAP recommendations as a condition of their financing.  Yet, they too appear to be letting Shell of the hook. After years of concern about Western Gray Whales, Shell is still avoiding its responsibilities to follow the advice of the scientists.   

As Sakhalin Energy plans to conduct new seismic testing in 2009 – and seismic testing can have some of the most serious impacts on whales – it is too bad that the company continues to put its construction schedules behind the well-being of Western Gray Whales.  This is just one more of the failures of the Sakhalin-II project, and one more reason the project should not be supported by public and private investors.

We received a rather strange press release from Shell and Sakhalin Energy over the weekend.  The press release stated that severe weather conditions had damaged production facilities at Sakhalin Energy’s platform of northeastern Sakhalin.  Apparently there was a “small release” of oil into the sea.  Even more strange, Sakhalin Energy spokespeople say that they don’t know when the release occurred!  They say the release was less than 10 liters – frankly hard to believe, given Sakhalin Energy’s track record so far. 

I don’t understand how the world’s largest integrated oil and gas project, built according to Shell and Sakhalin Energy to world-class standards, can have an oil spill and the company doesn’t even know when it occurred.  Meanwhile, I’m not surprised that this happened – severe storms hit Northeastern Sakhalin on a regular basis, especially going into winter.  Check out this photo to see the kind of waves you can get offshore of Northeastern Sakhalin. 

Of course, as global warming intensifies, so will the intensity of the storms.  This latest spill is similar to a September 1999 spill in which somewhere between 2 and 200 barrels of oil (depending on whether you ask the company or environmental groups) spilled when the floating storage tanker broke off from its moorings.  Let’s hope that independent analysis will show the actual amount of the spill and when it occurred. 

This latest incident – and Shell’s lack of information about when it occurred – proves once again that offshore oil development in arctic and subarctic conditions is just too risky for these fragile environments.  Shell just doesn’t know how to do it right. 

Yesterday, I attended a Congressional subcommittee hearing in San Francisco to talk about the Cosco Busan oil spill.  The hearing was led by Representative Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation (how’s that for a mouthful!).  Impressively, all of our Bay Area representatives showed – Pelosi, Woolsey, Lee, Miller, Tauscher, Lofgren, Lantos, and McNerney – what a turnout!  And we had Rep. Richardson from the Los Angeles area, who rightly pointed out that maritime safety is a national issue. 

I was impressed with the questioning from our members of Congress.  They were asking the right questions.  How could such a mistake happen?  Why was the response so slow and disorganized?  How do we improve our laws and regulations to make sure that a spill like the ‘Cosco Busan’ never happens again? 

I was not as impressed with the Coast Guard testimony.  While they owned up to the coordination problems, the Coast Guard kept saying that the response was appropriate.  I don’t understand how that can be, when no containment boom was placed around the ‘Cosco Busan’ to prevent oil from escaping out into the Bay?  For those interested, check out this YouTube version of the oil spill distribution, which demonstrates just how the strong tides and currents in San Francisco Bay made the oil churn through the Bay like it was in a washing machine.  Once the oil wasn’t initially contained, it was already too late. 

It seems like a lot of investigations have started.  The Coast Guard is doing its own investigation.  The National Transportation Safety Board is doing an investigation.  Governor Schwarzenegger has asked the Office of Spill Prevention and Response to conduct an investigation.  The US Attorney is doing an investigation.  And yesterday, Speaker Pelosi called for an Inspector General’s investigation.  Soon we will need an investigation to keep track of the investigations!  But unfortunately, none of these investigations are independent.  We need an independent, fresh look at our shipping safety regulations.  The regulations we have in place now are not enough to deal with the volume and size of ships we have moving through places like San Francisco Bay. 

We’re calling for an independent commission that will make recommendations about how to improve our shipping safety laws.  Check out our op-ed and go to this action alert to send a message to our elected leaders.

And let’s hope we can put the safeguards in place to make sure that our waters and wildlife don’t have to suffer from this pollution again in the future! 

Bird covered in oil from a spill on Sakhalin Island

One of our worst nightmares came true yesterday, when a cargo ship spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into San FranciscoBay.  The ship was traveling out of San FranciscoBay in heavy fog when it hit the BayBridge.

I commute into work on the ferry, so I was on the look-out for oil and oil spill response this morning.  Standing out on the front deck of the ferry, I smelled the oil before I saw it; there’s certainly a strong smell of oil hanging in the air.  I saw ribbons of oil, many with dark globules of floating oil, fromRichardsonBay in Sausalito to the FerryBuilding in San Francisco.  Some areas were harder hit than others – I particularly saw a lot of oil near Alcatraz and Fisherman’s Wharf, two of San Francisco’s biggest tourist attractions.  

According to news reports, beaches to the north of Golden GateBridge on the Pacific have been the worst hit so far – apparently the tide and the currents pushed the oil that direction.

This article starts to talk about some of the effects of the oil spill:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/08/MND7T870A.DTL  We’re just starting to see a lot of birds come back into the Bay for the winter, including cormorants, grebes, and pelicans, all of which I saw this morning from the ferry. We can only hope and pray that the effects on fisheries and birds are not serious.

To my surprise, I did not see any oil skimmers or other oil spill response equipment working in the Bay this morning.  I did see one Coast Guard helicopter, hopefully looking for oil sheens.  But I was surprised at the lack of oil spill response boats, especially since the weather is pretty good right now and the Bay is calm – as good conditions as you can get for cleaning up spilled oil.

According to this article, officials are “meeting” about how to respond:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/08/BAD8T8PLU.DTL  On the radio this morning, one official said proudly that 13 agencies were involved in the response.  I have a sinking feeling that it’s going to take a lot of meetings to get everyone on the same page before we see oil spill response vessels out on the Bay!

This is why we talk about the need for good oil spill response plans BEFORE accidents like this happen!  Once they happen, time is of the essence to clean up whatever is possible.  This is why we are so worried about the potential for oil spills in places like SakhalinIsland and Alaska – where the biological resources or so rich, yet we don’t have the cleanup technologies to prevent the damage from a major oil spill when it happens.  And as this oil spill shows, even with some of the best oil spill prevention measures, accidents do happen.  It’s not a question of if, but a question of when.

Of course, once the oil is in the water, it’s pretty much too late.  At best it will be possible to clean up a tiny fraction of the oil spilled, even in the best conditions.  I’m sure we’ll be spending a lot of time figuring out who’s guilty.  From the ferry, I could see the guilty cargo ship, with Hanjin spelled in large letters on the side.  But in this article (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/08/BAH3T81G7.DTL), the finger-pointing for responsibility is already starting:  “The ship is owned by a Greek firm that is chartering the vessel to Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd. of Seoul. Hanjin spokeswoman Sonya Cho said the ship ‘is operated by the Greek owner and his crew’ and that Hanjin ‘has no responsibility in any matter concerning this accident.’”  Hmmmm, sounds like Exxon to me!  Nice way to start avoiding responsibility.

Sakhalin’s economy depends on fishing.  Take Aniva District, for example:  one fish inspector told me that 70-80% of the local economy is tied to fishing.  And most of that is for salmon. 

So it’s no surprise that one of the major concerns for people on Sakhalin about oil and gas development is its impacts to salmon.  Shell has been roundly criticized by environmentalists and even the Russian government for the impacts to salmon spawning streams from its pipeline construction. 

Under Russian law, companies have to pay for damages to natural resources.  So Shell provided $11 million to the Sakhalin Fisheries Agency as compensation for its damage to salmon.  Regardless of the fact that this amount is too low, I was most amazed about how the Sakhalin Fisheries Agency then decided to use this money.  The Fisheries Agency used the compensation to reconstruct an enormous fish hatchery on the Taranai River.  The reconstruction included building a barrier that blocks fish from going upriver so that all the salmon can be taken at the hatchery.  Essentially, this will destroy the fisheries in the upper part of the watershed.  

Shell and the Sakhalin Fisheries Agency should know better.  It’s much smarter to spend money to protect healthy wild salmon habitat than to build hatcheries that just lead to more threats to wild salmon.  Instead, they’ve just doubled the damage to salmon from Sakhalin-II and oil and gas development.  In the indigenous Ainu language, Taranai River means “Fish River.”  Too bad this fish river is being killed. 

Continuing our trip here on Sakhalin, we traveled north over the last few days to visit indigenous reindeer herders and indigenous fish camps.  The Uilta people in Sakhalin traditionally herd reindeer, while the Nivkh people are fishers.  Both peoples are being impacted by enormous oil and gas projects in Northeastern Sakhalin led by Shell and Exxon. 

We used a Gaz-66 – an enormous Russian truck that can pretty much deal with any road conditions – to drive out to the reindeer herders.  After getting near to the area we hiked for about half a mile through lichen, dwarf birch, and dwarf pine to find the camp.  We saw berries and mushrooms as we walked – this “forest-tundra” area was very rich.  The herders we met had about 60 reindeer.  Only about 17 Uilta continue to herd reindeer.  Indigenous peoples such as the Uilta in Russia have had to adapt to constant changes – from forced collectivization and forced resettlement into large towns under the Soviets, to adapting to the market economy and a collapse of government subsidies in the 1990s, to massive oil and gas developments on their traditional territories over the last several years.  Traditions have been lost, although a number of indigenous peoples in Russia – including the herders who we met – are trying to restore the traditions. 

The herders said that ever since Exxon built an enormous oil processing complex, the reindeer have been forced out of their traditional calving area.  The noise, lights, and constant traffic from this processing facility are too much for the reindeer.  The herders are worried about survival rates among the reindeer calves as they do what they can to increase the reindeer population. 

The Nivkh fishers are also worried about the impacts of Shell and Exxon’s projects on their traditional fishing lifestyles.  They spend the summers in fish camps spread out along the bays of Northeastern Sakhalin and come there year-round to fish saffron cod, char, and salmon.  We arrived in time to see some of our indigenous partners fishing for salmon and then shared a wonderful traditional meal.  But the Nivkh grandmothers we talked with are worried – they say that more and more often, they come across fish that have sores and blisters or that smell like oil.  They don’t know why this is, and the oil companies have refused to study the problem.  

Their frustrations with the oil and gas developments led the Nivkh, Uilta, and other indigenous peoples to blockade roads to Shell and Exxon’s projects in 2005.  As a result, Shell agreed to an indigenous peoples’ development plan that provides a council with $300,000 per year over 5 years.  But what happens after these five years are up?  In our conversations, we learned that many indigenous peoples are concerned that the money from this plan won’t really be used to help with restoring and protecting their traditional culture.  Instead, they know that they’re the ones who will stay in northeastern Sakhalin.  The oil companies will leave Sakhalin, and the native peoples will be left with the mess. 

Vasily, a reindeer herder, told us that all he really wants is “calm.”  He wants a calm place to herd reindeer and restore his people’s traditions.