Offshore Oil and Continental Shelf Ecology

Author: Dr Stanislav Patin
VNIRO Publishing, Moscow, 2001. 241pp (Russian)

* The English translation of the book will be soon available at offshore-environment.com in the digital form

Read the book Synopsis and Table of Content

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

"Nothing enkindles fantasy more than the lack of facts."
M. Ye. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Russia is at the threshold of large-scale development of the offshore oil and gas resources. This is a relatively new activity for our country and it has started attracting a great deal of attention in different quarters, including government officials, industrialists, fishermen, environmentalists, scientists and general public. This attention has been steadily increasing as new offshore oil exploration and production projects are being introduced and discussed both in the media and among experts in different disciplines.

The difference in positions regarding the offshore oil and gas projects and their environmental safety is striking. Virtually every meeting and discussion on the subject, especially the ones devoted to environmental impact assessments of a particular project, are marked by disagreements, heated debates and clashes of opinions. The bedrock of these disagreements is usually the lack of clear understanding of what exactly occurs at different stages of exploration and production of the offshore oil and gas resources and what are the actual environmental and fisheries impacts of these activities. "Nothing enkindles fantasy more...". These words that I took as an epigraph came to my mind during one of such discussions.

All viewpoints regarding the environmental safety (or hazard) associated with the offshore oil and gas production can be boiled down to three basic positions.

Alarmists believe that this is a true calamity for the nature and living resources, which have already been seriously undermined by man. They call to stop the oil expansion on the continental shelf. The most often used arguments include the well-known details of catastrophic oil spills. This triggers off the memories of oil-covered beaches, dying sea birds and mammals, and other disquieting associations imprinted in public consciousness by media coverage after every oil tanker accident and similar events.

Optimists, on the contrary, do not see any environmental risk in this case. Moreover, oil platforms serve as artificial reefs and thereby enrich the fish resources. And even if some damage is occasionally inflicted on nature, it is fully compensated by the economic gains offered by the offshore oil.

And, finally, the last (often the largest) group finds difficulty in providing definite answers and prefers to sit on the fence. Their difficulty can be easily explained by taking into account two circumstances. First one is the multi-plane nature of the issue and the lack of clear, precise and objective information describing all aspects of actual and potential hazardous impacts of the offshore oil activities. The second circumstance has to do with the complexity and contradictoriness of some environmental laws, standards and regulations that are sometimes difficult to understand even for experts. These regulations allow to find any answer to the question regarding the possibility of offshore waste discharges into the sea - from a complete ban on such discharges to indistinctly worded permissions.

The polarization of opinions, uncertainty of positions as well as vested departmental interests can be found not only among specialists and experts in different disciplines associated with studies of the sea and its resources. They are also typical of corridors of power and among officials when decisions have to be made with respect to a particular offshore oil and gas project. Within certain limits, such differences of positions and opinions is quite normal. It can be seen not only in Russia, but also in many other countries with offshore oil and gas reserves. However, sooner or later the time comes to give definite answers to three simple questions:

• Is it permissible or impermissible to discharge wastes into the sea during the offshore oil and gas activities from the standpoint of protection of marine ecosystems and bioresources?
  
• If yes, under what conditions and within which limitations?
  
• If not, why?

The time to answer these questions has come for Russia as well. Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of the offshore oil and gas resources and their large-scale development is about to start. At the same time, we should also bear in mind that Russia possesses unique biological resources of the sea. It is among the world leaders in sea fishing (occupying the fourth place after China, Japan and the United States). Traditionally, up to 15-20% of the country's demand in animal proteins has been met by sea products.

Such is the general background and circumstances that have prompted me to write this work in attempt to analyze the offshore oil and gas activity from the environmental, ecological and fisheries standpoints. In contrast to my first book (Patin, 1999) and some other summaries written on the topic, the main emphasis will be placed on analysis of recent studies on the issues that trigger particularly heated debates in the course of environmental impact assessments of the offshore oil and gas projects. In addition to the world-wide literary sources, many references are also made to the unpublished or little known data obtained in recent years during drilling activities on the Russian shelf under major projects, including Sakhalin-1, Sakhalin 2 and others.

This work is intended for a broad spectrum of readers, primarily environmentalists, ecologists, fishery experts and research workers. I hope that it will be useful for those involved in different aspects of offshore oil and gas projects, including their implementation, ecological appraisals, monitoring and environmental impact assessments. It is now up to the reader to judge whether my hopes are justified.

Synopsis of Dr.Patin's new book "Offshore Oil and Continental Shelf Ecology"

Table of Content from Dr.Patin's new book "Offshore Oil and Continental Shelf Ecology"

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