http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/575533357.shtml

Environmental consultant questions feasibility of using oil dispersant chemicals in responding to an Arctic offshore oil spill
by Alan Bailey

Lauded by some as a major contributor to the cleanup of spilled oil following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and slammed by others as environmentally dangerous, the use of chemicals to disperse oil slicks has become a controversial topic.

The concept behind dispersant use is simple. The dispersant chemicals, acting a bit like dishwashing liquid, break the oil into tiny particles, greatly increasing the surface area of oil exposed to water and hence greatly accelerating the rate at which oil-consuming microbes devour the oil, causing the oil to disappear.

But do dispersants, demonstrated in laboratory conditions, work in the hurly-burly of a real spill response situation? And, more particularly, would dispersants work, were there to be an oil spill catastrophe in the Arctic offshore?

Skeptical
Jeffrey Short, an environmental consultant working for Oceana, a marine conservation organization, is very skeptical about the potential effectiveness of dispersants in the Arctic. Short, who worked as a research chemist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for 31 years and has published more than 60 scientific papers on Arctic pollution, spoke at the Alaska Forum on the Environment on Feb. 4, giving his views regarding the problems associated with dispersant use in the Arctic.

Short, who said he had been involved in the Deepwater Horizon response, working for private entities, said that claims about the effectiveness of dispersants during that response had been overstated, and that there was a lack of evidence for dispersant chemicals having had any impact in boosting the natural biodegradation of oil that had spewed from the out-of-control, seafloor well. For example, no one observed the milky appearance of dispersed oil in the water, he said.

And, although the government-published oil budget calculator for the Deepwater Horizon response indicated that dispersants had been somewhat effective, the technical underpinnings of that conclusion, as expressed in the budget calculator report, appear far short of convincing, he said.

Goldilocks circumstances
The effective use of dispersants requires a “Goldilocks” set of circumstances, in which the wind is strong enough to cause the necessary wave action for mixing oil with dispersant chemicals, but not so strong as to blow away the fine spray of dispersant, normally applied from an aircraft, Short said. And seas that are too rough can cause dispersants to escape into underlying water, rather than mix with an oil slick on the surface, he said.
Also, there is typically a relatively short time window following an oil spill, during which dispersants can be used, as evaporation and emulsification of the oil eventually renders the oil unresponsive to dispersant chemicals.

Given seasonal ice, the frequency of strong winds and the prevalence of sea fog in the Arctic Ocean, the appropriate conditions for the application of dispersants in Arctic seas may only occur for 10 percent of the time, Short said.

Lab tests
Short said that 10 years ago he had conducted some laboratory tests for the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council, testing the effect of a commonly used oil dispersant on Alaska North Slope crude oil in sub-Arctic conditions. Those tests demonstrated that the dispersant did not work well in cold water, with dispersant effectiveness dropping with reduced water temperatures and with low water salinity, Short said. These results do not bode well for dispersant effectiveness in the Arctic – in addition to the effect of low water temperatures on dispersant action, melting ice in the Arctic seas tends to create a layer of low salinity water near the sea surface, he said.
Compounding the technical issues relating to the potential effectiveness of dispersants in the Arctic is the sparse transportation architecture for the resupply of dispersant chemicals to field responders, Short said.

Asked about the possibility that low water temperatures would slow oil degradation, thus extending the time window within which dispersants would be effective, Short responded that the weathering of oil is less sensitive to temperature than to wind, of which there is plenty in the Arctic. The rate of incorporation of water into the oil, a phenomenon that takes place quite quickly, depends on the composition of the oil, he said.

Continuing debate
Short’s comments come amid a continuing debate over the realistic feasibility of conducting an offshore oil spill response in the Arctic. And a report, issued in November by the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, after overviewing the considerable body of research already done into oil spill response in the Arctic offshore made a number of recommendations for further research, including a recommendation that people evaluate the effectiveness of dispersants in Arctic conditions.

A joint industry program, known as SINTEF and based in Norway, conducted a series of large-scale field experiments in the mid-2000s, testing the use of various response techniques, including dispersants, using oil deliberately spilled in the sea under carefully controlled conditions at an Arctic location. SINTEF reported that it had found rates of oil weathering in broken ice conditions to be considerably lower than rates observed for the same oil in open water. The final report for the program also said that researchers had experienced success in dispersing oil in water around ice floes, by applying the dispersants from spray arms deployed from vessels and using the prop wash or jet motors of response boats to mix the dispersant with the oil.

Oil budget
A read of the technical documentation for the Deepwater Horizon oil budget calculator makes it clear that there was a wide range of expert opinion and no general agreement on the effectiveness of dispersants in the response to that disaster. A December 2012 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science presents an overview of the scientific findings from Deepwater Horizon. Written by senior officials from several federal agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the paper says that monitoring of oil in the water through a variety of techniques had provided oil particle size data consistent with expectations from chemical oil dispersion. The oil budget calculator subsequently concluded that chemical dispersion accounted for about 16 percent of the oil that had escaped from the well, the paper says.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://ens-newswire.com/2013/01/30/dutch-court-finds-shell-liable-for-nigeria-oil-damages/

Posted by News Editor in Energy, Latest News, RSS on January 30, 2013 8:27 am / no comments

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands, January 30, 2013 – A Dutch court ruled today that Shell is responsible for not preventing the pollution of farmlands at Ikot Ada Udo in Nigeria’s Akwa Ibom State and ordered the company to pay compensation for the damage.

The case was brought by Friends of the Earth Netherlands and four Nigerian farmers in 2008 against the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd. and its parent company Royal Dutch Shell.

This is the first time that Shell has been ordered by a court to pay compensation for damage caused by its operations. The Nigerian justice system has never produced such a ruling.

Women at a leaking oil wellhead near the community of Ikot Ada Udo in the Niger Delta, (Photo by Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR courtesy FOE Netherlands)

The case is unique because it is the first time that a Dutch multinational corporation has been brought before the court in its home country for environmental damage caused abroad.

The case focused on just three of the thousands of oil leaks in Nigeria. The plaintiffs demanded that Shell clean up the oil pollution in the villages, compensate the farmers for the damages suffered and maintain the oil pipelines better in the future.

“This win for the farmers of Ikot Ada Udo has set a precedent as it will be an important step that multinationals can more easily be made answerable for the damage they do in developing countries. We anticipate other communities will now demand that Shell pay for the assault on their environment,” said Friends of the Earth Nigeria’s Executive Director Nnimmo Bassey, who played a pivotal role in bringing to light the havoc wreaked by Shell in the Niger Delta.

The ruling is a victory for Nigerian people and the environment, said Geert Ritsema of Friends of the Earth Netherlands, or Milieudefensie in Dutch. “This verdict is great news for the people in Ikot Ada Udo who started this case together with Milieudefensie. But the verdict also offers hope to other victims of environmental pollution caused by multinationals,” he said.

“At the same time, the verdict is a bitter disappointment for the people in the villages of Oruma and Goi – where the court did not rule to hold Shell liable for the damage,” said Ritsema. “Fortunately, this can still change in an appeal.”

Friends of the Earth Netherlands and the Nigerian farmers will appeal the decision in the Goi and Oruma cases.

The plaintiffs will also appeal the principle point of the liability of the Royal Dutch Shell parent company.

The reason that the court did not decide to hold the parent company liable for damage done in Nigeria was that Friends of the Earth Netherlands was denied access to evidence proving that Royal Dutch Shell, based in the Netherlands, determines the daily affairs of its Nigerian subsidiary, Royal Dutch Shell owns 100 percent of Shell Nigeria shares, while Shell Nigeria profits estimated at 1.8 billion euros annually, are deposited in the Netherlands.

Nevertheless, under existing laws, Royal Dutch Shell cannot be held liable for the damage done on the basis of these facts alone. The plaintiffs must prove that governance actually comes from the corporate headquarters in the Netherlands.

Because Shell has not been ordered by the court to allow access to internal company documents which would expose this governance, it has been very difficult to prove this.

Paul de Clerck of Friends of the Earth Europe, said, “Many European companies are involved in similar situations to that of Shell and are causing environmental damage outside Europe. We see a clear gap in European legislation. It allows European parent companies such as Royal Dutch Shell to pocket the profits from a foreign subsidiary, but these parents cannot be held liable for the damage they cause while making those profits.”

Friends of the Earth Europe is urging the European Commission to ensure that parent companies are automatically held liable for the actions of their foreign subsidiaries.

Next week, on February 6, the European Commission will discuss with stakeholders steps it can take to limit the adverse human rights and environmental impacts of business.

Friends of the Earth Netherlands finds it “incomprehensible” that the court ruled that Shell proved sabotage was involved in two of the three villages. The court has allowed itself be convinced by a number of blurry Shell photos and poor quality video images.

The environmental group remains convinced that poor maintenance is the cause of the spills. But even in oil spills where sabotage is involved, the group believes that Shell bears responsibility and is liable for the damage.

“An oil giant cannot leave 7,000 kilometres of pipeline and hundreds of installations unprotected and unguarded in a politically unstable and economically underdeveloped region,” said Ritsema.

Plaintiff Chief Eric Dooh lost his farm and fish ponds due to an oil spill from a Shell Nigeria pipeline.

Shell oil spill into Chief Eric Dooh’s creek caught fire. (Photo courtesy FOE Netherlands)

“In September 2004, a leak occurred along the Trans-Niger pipeline, which is owned by Shell,” says Chief Dooh. “The spilled oil streamed from the leak into the creeks. A large fire quickly developed. It spread out over the oil slick in rapid tempo, and the whole creek was ablaze.”

“We gathered together a group of people as quickly as possible to take up contact with Shell,” recounts Chief Dooh. “Shell came here the following day with firemen, police officers and soldiers. For three days they tried to put out the fire, but when they were unable to do so, they simply let the fire burn itself out and all the mangrove trees were burned.”

“Because of the spill, I’ve lost everything,” he says. “The embankments around my fish ponds were destroyed by the fire, so oil streamed into my ponds and killed all my fish. The five canoes I owned burned, my cassava farm burned down and the trees I had planted have gone up in smoke. I have nothing left. All the money I saved, all my hard work, it was all for nothing.”
An oil disaster has been ongoing in Nigeria for decades. Tens of millions of barrels of oil have been spilled there since the 1950s.

Friends of the Earth Netherlands says that Nigeria’s oil spill disaster does not receive the attention it deserves, in contrast to other oil disasters such as the Exxon Valdez tanker in Prince William Sound Alaska or the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, where there was massive public outrage that resulted in an emergency plan. The group said today, “The Nigerian disaster is a silent one, which has disastrous consequences for people, wildlife, nature and the environment, but little is being done about it.”

The Niger is the third-largest river in Africa and the oil-rich Niger Delta region, with its mangrove forests, is one of the world’s largest wetland areas. But now a black layer of oil covers many of the Niger Delta’s creeks, ponds, mangroves and rivers. Many of the region’s animals are threatened, including chimpanzees, leopards and elephants.

Niger Delta residents experience the burdens of oil extraction, but reap no benefits. Most are dependent on agriculture, fishing and fish farming and gathering snails and other products from the forests. For them, oil pollution means a lack of drinking water, inedible fish, agricultural fields that must lie fallow for years and crops that never grow.

In August 2011, the UN Environment Programme issued the results of its 14-month investigation covering more than 200 locations, 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way, more than 5,000 medical records and talks with 23,000 people at local community meetings.

UNEP found that control and maintenance of oilfield infrastructure “has been and remains inadequate. The Shell Petroleum Development Company’s own procedures have not been applied, creating public health and safety issues.”

UNEP concluded that environmental restoration of the section of the Niger Delta known as Ogoniland “could prove to be the world’s most wide-ranging and long term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health.”

A Niger Delta resident shows a Shell Nigeria worker a pool of spilled oil. (Photo courtesy FOE Netherlands)

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2013. All rights reserved.

Environment News Service (http://s.tt/1z9qT)

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.ogj.com/articles/2013/01/senate-democrats-oppose-atlantic-offshore-seismic-tests.html?cmpid=EnlDailyJanuary312013

Oil and Gas Journal: Senate Democrats oppose Atlantic offshore seismic tests
WASHINGTON, DC, Jan. 31
01/31/2013
By Nick Snow
OGJ Washington Editor

Seven other US Senate Democrats joined Frank R. Lautenberg (NJ) in expressing concern over Atlantic offshore seismic tests planned as part of the Obama administration’s 2012-17 Outer Continental Shelf management program.

“While we support your administration’s decision not to allow lease sales for offshore oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, the proposed seismic testing poses a serious threat to our coastal economy, environment, and marine life,” they said in a Jan. 30 letter to US President Barack Obama.

Seismic testing off the US Atlantic coast from Delaware to the middle of Florida “could injure or kill thousands of marine mammals and fish, including endangered speciesŠin addition to moving the region closer to risky offshore oil drilling,” the letter noted.

In addition to Lautenberg, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), Robert Menendez (NJ), Benjamin L. Cardin (Md.), Barbara A. Mikulski (Md.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), and Maria E. Cantwell (Wash.) signed the letter.

Contact Nick Snow at nicks@pennwell.com.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/29-1

I can’t believe the court sided with Transcanada. Sad comment on our civil liberties. dv

Published on Tuesday, January 29, 2013 by
Tar sands activists vow to keep fighting despite repressive tactics
– Lauren McCauley, staff writer

Transcanada, the multinational giant behind the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, has followed a new corporate strategy by filing crushing lawsuits against individual activists and financially vulnerable organizations that have tried to halt to the construction of the controversial project.

(Photo: Tar Sands Blockade) Despite the repressive tactics designed to censor opposition and intimidate others from joining such activities, those targeted vow to continue the fight to protect “their homes and futures from toxic tar sands.”

The suit’s defendants, which included several environmental groups including anti-pipeline coalition Tar Sands Blockade and 19 individual protesters, “were threatened with losing their homes and life’s savings if the lawsuit went forward,” Tar Sands Blockade said a press statement.

Kevin Gosztola of FireDogLake explains:

The suit brought was what is known as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP). Such lawsuits enable fascism by providing a mechanism for a corporation to go after individuals or groups engaged in protest or freedom of speech. They are often used against people who lack resources or cannot afford to pay the legal expenses necessary to stand up to a corporation in court.

Despite the legal setback, members of Tar Sands Blockade vowed to keep fighting.

“TransCanada is dead wrong if they think a civil lawsuit against a handful of Texans is going to stop a grassroots civil disobedience movement,” said spokesperson and defendant Ramsey Sprague. “This is nothing more than another example of TransCanada repressing dissent and bullying Texans who are defending their homes and futures from toxic tar sands.”

Tammie Carson, another target of the lawsuit and grandmother from Arlington, TX, said she took the action to protect her grandkids’ future. “I couldn’t sit idly by and watch as a multinational corporate bully abused eminent domain to build a dirty and dangerous tar sands pipeline right through Texans’ backyards,” she said. “I had no choice but to settle or lose my home and everything I’ve worked for my entire life.”

Citing one court’s opinion of the SLAPP lawsuit, the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC) writes, “Short of a gun to the head, a greater threat to First Amendment expression can scarcely be imagined.”

In reaction to the settlement, Lauren Regan, veteran attorney with CLDC who helped coordinate legal representation for the activists, said:

This is a David versus Goliath situation, where an unethical, transnational corporation is using its weight to crush First Amendment rights of people speaking out and resisting the irreparable destruction that will result from construction of this highly controversial XL Pipeline…But the resistance to the pipeline is growing, not shrinking; it’s coming from everywhere. This is a national and global issue that will effect us all.

Lawyers from the CLDC represented the Tar Sands Blockade, Rising Tide North America and Rising Tide North Texas as well as the other targeted individuals. As part of the settlement, the activists agreed to no longer trespass or cause damage to Keystone XL property throughout the pipeline’s entire southern leg, including any demonstrations “aimed at interfering with pipeline construction,” the Toronto Star reports.

However, as Gosztola adds, “what it does not do is stop individuals unknown to TransCanada and groups other than Tar Sands Blockade or Rising Tide chapters from engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience or disruptive activity.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/28-4

Published on Monday, January 28, 2013

In fight against fracking, activists say: ‘Our voices and our numbers are growing’
– Andrea Germanos, staff writer

Anti-fracking activists in Bessemer, Penn. on Sunday. A flare from Shell’s drilling is visible in the background. (Photo: Shadbush Collective)

We need farms, not fracking.

This was the message from a group of concerned activists on Sunday afternoon as they blocked a Shell fracking site in Pennsylvania in part of the wave of rising actions against fossil fuels.

Wearing signs reading “Fracking Threatens Food” and “Protect Farms for Our Future,” members of the Shadbush Environmental Justice Collective rallied behind the passionate Maggie Henry, whose organic pork and poultry farm is less than 4,000 feet from Shell’s drilling site.

“People buy my food because they know that it is literally the purest that you can get. My animals run around out on ground, in pasture. They’re not cooped up in cages,” said Henry, who’s been farming for 35 years. “Agriculture, not fracking, is the number one industry in Pennsylvania. This threatens my air, my water, my farm, my livelihood.”

She’s put her blood and sweat into her “beyond organic” farm, she said. “Every single penny we’ve earned we’ve invested into this farm.”

With her farm, water and environment potentially ruined from Shell’s fracking, Henry asked, “How is this different from Shell sticking their hand in my pocket and stealing from me?”

Devon Cohen, one of the protesters involved in the day’s action, added, “Why are we willing to risk so much at the hands of multinational corporations like Shell who have shown their hand in the past as human rights abusers and irresponsible parties of environmental destruction?”Photo: Shadbush Collective

Hundreds of abandoned oil wells make the site a particularly risky place to frack, the group says. Hydro-geologist Daniel Fisher, who has studied the area, warned, “Each of these abandoned wells is a potentially direct pathway or conduit to the surface should any gas or fluids migrate upward from the wells during or after fracking.”

Four of the protesters locked themselves to a large papier-mâché pig named Henrietta, which blocked traffic to the site for three hours. Henrietta was made to symbolize the farm as well as “the gas industry [which] is piggish about the carbon-based fuel in the ground and are taking it at our expense,” Henry said.

When the protesters locked in the “pig” agreed to disperse and avoid arrest after several hours, Shell took it. In Henry’s words, “They stole Henrietta.”

Nick Lubecki, one of the protesters who was locked to Henrietta, started his own farm this year in Pittsburgh and said, “It is extremely disturbing as a young farmer to have to worry about the safety of the water supply and a chaotically changing climate while these out of state drillers have the red carpet rolled out for them. In a few years the drillers will all be gone when this boom turns to bust like these things always do. I don’t want to be stuck with their mess to clean up.”

The group stated, “Henrietta’s fate is in Shell’s hands, but we’re free to fight another day, our voices and our numbers are growing, and we won’t stop until we win.”

Maggie Henry is not about to stop fighting, either. “We’re not giving up until they give up,” she said.

Farmer Maggie Henry and activists locked to Henrietta. (Photo: Shadbush Collective)