Large oil spill in Arctic waters impossible to clean up: WWF

Exxon Valdez oil spill remains the worst ever in northern waters: WWF claims similar spill in the Arctic would be impossible to clean up. 

The World Wildlife Fund says that a possible offshore oil spill in the Canadian Arctic would be more difficult to clean up than previously thought. Arctic ice, lack of daylight, high winds and low temperatures make it extremely difficult to contain, burn off or disperse spilled oil, the conservation group writes in a filing to the National Energy Board. During the potential Arctic drilling season, it would be impossible to deploy an emergency oil-spill response up to 84 per cent of the time, the WWF filing says.

The group states that it is not against drilling "per se," but that it must be done safely. The numbers put forward in WWF's filing shows "how little capacity we have to respond if something goes wrong," said Rob Powell of the WWF.

The National Energy Board is conducting a review of Arctic offshore drilling, undertaken in the wake of the BP offshore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Oil companies like BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Imperial Oil have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to lease large tracts of Canada’s Arctic seabed for exploration.

Considering the ability of these companies to mount a cleanup in the event of a spill in Arctic waters, a consultant reported that an emergency response to a spill would be impossible between 15 and 78 per cent of the time because of weather and other conditions.

The WWF says those numbers, bad as they are, do not paint the whole picture, which is worse. Among the difficulties that an oil company would encounter in attempting a cleanup are

• The acknowledged inability by oil companies to contain more than 100 barrels of spilled oil
• The problem of ice: the consultant's numbers refer only to spills on open water
• The problem of wind chill
• The problem of "chemical herders": these have not been approved for use in Canada

With these problems factored in, the period during which cleanup would be impossible grows to 44–84 per cent of the time.