Commission: Feds' Arctic spill funds fall short

That's despite billions spent by the oil industry in recent years to purchase oil and gas exploration leases in U.S. waters in the Arctic, the commission says.

Federal research on oil spill prevention and cleanup in the Arctic is "fragmented, uncoordinated, under-funded, and in dire, immediate need of improvement," according to a draft white paper now being circulated by the seven-member commission, created by Congress in the 1980s to prioritize and promote Arctic research.

The need for better science is getting critical, the commission says in the paper. The risks of oil spills in the region appear to be growing due to changing climate and sea ice, increasing ship traffic and offshore oil and gas exploration projects, it says.

"We need to see a much more robust oil spill research program in the United States," said Mead Treadwell, the commission's Alaska-based chairman.

He aired the paper's findings at a meeting in Anchorage on Friday. The purpose of the meeting was to gather input before the commission finalizes the paper and sends it to the White House and to federal research funding committees. Among those attending the meeting were federal and state regulators, oil industry officials and their contractors, environmentalists and researchers.

Federal officials responsible for oil spill studies and research planning said Friday they are prioritizing the Arctic for additional oil spill research and are reviewing the commission's paper.

"Our challenge is to take a look at the ideas presented and provide you feedback," said Capt. Andrew Lloyd, chief of the Coast Guard Office of Incident Management and Preparedness, based in Washington, D.C.

"We know that we will have a spill in the Arctic. It's just a matter of when," said Amy Merten of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Response and Restoration. She said her agency is taking on new research projects to consider Arctic spills' potential impacts on the environment.

Environmentalists and industry officials who spoke at Friday's meeting said they support the commission's proposal for increased federal funding.

"Up to this point, industry has been handling most of the (research) burden," said Judy Miller, a scientist for ASRC Energy Services. Her firm, a subsidiary of Arctic Slope Regional Corp., is providing ice, weather and marine mammal monitoring to some industry clients in the Arctic, including Shell.

Shell hopes to drill exploration wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas this summer. The company spends several million dollars per year on spill-related research in the Arctic and is "very supportive" of any effort to advance the science, said Curtis Smith, Shell's Alaska spokesman.

Jeff Short, a scientist for the environmental group Oceana, said he agreed with the commission's finding that federal oil spill research efforts in the Arctic are deficient.

"The funding hasn't been there," said Short, a former federal scientist.

The commission is requesting that a federal interagency committee, chaired by Lloyd, update its national and regional research plans for oil spills and fund those plans using a $2.7 billion federal trust fund for oil spill-related activities.

The fund, called the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, is replenished by an 8-cent tax on every barrel of crude oil produced in or imported to the country. The fund was created in the legislation that Congress passed in the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound. Research is only one of the trust fund's uses. Federal agencies use up to $50 million per year from the fund to help pay their costs for responding to oil spill emergencies.

Treadwell said that less than $5 million per year from the fund is being spent on oil spill research, though the committee could allocate up to $20 million under federal law.

In the draft white paper, the commission suggests that the national spending for oil spill research from the trust fund be increased to between $30 million and $50 million, with up to $10 million of that dedicated to the Arctic.

Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.