Alaska News

Coast Guard identifies worst potential oil spills in Arctic

There are two types of oil spills in the Arctic that federal agencies have decided would be their worst nightmares and trigger calls for help from other Arctic nations.

One would be from a well bursting in the Chukchi Sea, such as where Shell is drilling now, and the other would be from a crude oil ship running aground on Akun Island, through Unimak Pass. These are conceivable scenarios that the U.S. Coast Guard has posed to help it and other federal agencies practice emergency responses with other Arctic nations. The Coast Guard will present them at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., to the Emergency Prevention Preparedness and Response working group of the Arctic Council later this month. The other countries will share their worst-case scenarios too, but since the U.S. chairs the council, it is leading the exercise.

"We wanted something that was realistic, based on real-world activity and real-world activity has inherent risks," said Mark Everett, a Coast Guard incident management and preparedness advisor. "The two largest sources of crude petroleum would be an outer continental shelf drilling operation like what's going on in the Chukchi and crude-oil-laden vessels."

Everett said he worked through prospects that were already spelled out by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation's spill prevention and response division.

The worst-case scenario for the North Slope Subarea Contingency Plan -- a well spewing in the Chukchi -- describes a blowout releasing crude oil in August at a rate of 61,000 barrels per day, declining to 20,579 barrels by day 74, discharging more than 2 million barrels overall. This would be in an area where it's nearly impossible to save marine mammals such as polar bears and walruses. But they, as well as shellfish, plankton, lower trophic organisms, seals, migratory whales, subsistence fish, waterfowl concentrations, seabird colonies and historic properties, would all be at risk.

And in the Aleutian Islands, the scenario is of a tanker carrying petroleum losing power and getting hit while sailing through Unimak Pass toward Dutch Harbor, spilling 200,000 barrels.

Everett made some edits to the scenarios and sent them to local, state and federal colleagues for input. The director of spill prevention and response at the Department of Environmental Conservation said both of them would elicit international responses, and talking about them could help with collaborative efforts at a time when working with Russia is "not as easy as Canada."

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"They're great examples of the risks that we're worried about and also would allow us to work through the protocols of diplomacy," said spill and response director Kristin Ryan.

Everett said the Coast Guard, which volunteered to lead the EPPR in this exercise, will use this three-day meeting in D.C. to create a virtual oil spill the countries can practice responding to next year. Last year Canada was the host of the first oil response exercise, since it was chairing the Arctic Council and the Arctic nations only signed an agreement to help each other in 2013. The countries practiced over the phone and Internet communicating about a vessel in distress in Northern Canada that was going to cause a spill.

"We actually found that some of the notification numbers, telephones numbers and fax numbers were outdated," he said. There were also bilateral agreements that confused the Arctic nations agreement, which he said were smoothed out because of the exercise.

There are a few other initiatives the Coast Guard will bring up at the meeting, including an inventory of all the available resources and an interactive mapping tool that can centralize information in emergencies.

The Environmental Response Management Application, an online map called ERMA that was inspired by the Deepwater Horizon spill, integrates information in real time about ship locations, weather and ocean currents. The chief of the spatial data branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Amy Merten, who chairs EPPR, has worked closely with ERMA and wants it to become a pan-Arctic tool.

"It's definitely all about trying to be more prepared," Merten said. "The idea is really to heighten all of our respective awareness on the capabilities and the gaps of the different nations."

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