Norway
opens Arctic border area to oil drilling
Norway's Parliament
has opened up a new area on the fringe of the Arctic Ocean to
offshore oil drilling despite protests from opponents who fear
catastrophic oil spills in the remote and icy region.
20
June, 2013
Most
of the Norwegian sector of the Barents Sea, which the Nordic country
shares with Russia, is already open to petroleum activities.
But
environmentalists and some opposition lawmakers say the risk to
Arctic sea ice is higher in a Switzerland-sized area straddling the
Russian maritime border, and wanted to make parts of it off limits to
oil and gas drilling.
Parliament
sided with the government in a vote late Wednesday and opened the
entire area to drilling, with the caveat that no activity can take
place within 31 miles (50 kilometers) of the ice edge.
"This
is a clear break in Norwegian policy," said Nils Harley Boisen,
of the World Wildlife Fund. "And moving completely against all
expert advice on what is safe operations."
In
2003, Arctic sea ice extended into the northern part of that area, he
said.
Christian
Democrat lawmaker Kjell Ingolf Ropstad, who opposed the move, said
operations in icy waters are complicated, risky and potentially
hazardous to sensitive Arctic ecosystems.
The
government says the environmental risks will be managed carefully,
noting that Norway doesn't allow drilling in areas covered by sea
ice.
Norway
has become one of the world's richest countries per capita thanks to
exports from its offshore oil and gas industry. It's now moving its
search into the Arctic region in a bid to offset declining production
in the North Sea.
The
slice of the Barents Sea that was opened by Parliament on Wednesday
is in an area that was disputed with Russia until the countries
signed a maritime border deal in 2010.
Ben
Ayliffe, an Arctic campaigner at Greenpeace, said the move highlights
the oil industry's creep toward the North Pole as climate change
thaws the frozen region — estimated to hold up to 13 percent of the
world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its untapped natural gas.
However,
he added that the Arctic oil rush seems to have lost steam with Shell
cancelling drilling plans off Alaska this year, Conoco-Phillips
suspending plans for Arctic drilling in 2014 and Statoil postponing
plans to drill its northernmost well ever in the Barents Sea partly
because it couldn't get a rig "winterized" in time.
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