Indigenous people fear oil pollution in the Arctic

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) warned on Tuesday of the danger of oil pollution for indigenous people in the Arctic. Several thousand Sami, Nenets and Khanty are threatened with the destruction of their habitat if Norway, as planned, opens up all its territories in the Barent sea for oil-drilling. On Tuesday a confidential draft of a white book of the Norwegian environment authority indicated that no special protection areas are envisaged in the Barent sea.

The GfbV reports that the indigenous people of the Arctic are anxiously watching developments around the oil boom in the Barent sea. Every month in the Norwegian or Russian part of the cleanest sea of the world new oil reserves are being discovered and opened up. For many of the 40,000 Sami in north Norway and the 9,000 Nenets and Khanty indigenous people in the north of Russia fishing is an important source of food. If oil-tankers meet with accidents or if things go wrong with the oil-drilling not only the diversity of fish in the Barent sea is endangered, but a part of the means of subsistence of the indigenous peoples in the Arctic is destroyed. The Barent sea is the spawning-ground for many kinds of fish.

Although Norway is planning strict environmental controls for the extraction of oil, experience shows that oil pollution is a foregone conclusion. In spite of the strict environment regulations there have been since 1990 some 2,500 accidents in oil-drilling off the Norwegian coast.

At the end of December 2005 the Italian company ENI discovered in its Goliath oilfield in the Barent sea at least 100 million barrels of oil. In the autumn of 2006 the „Snow-White Natural Gas Project” is to go into production near the northern Norwegian town of Hammerfest. It is planned that natural gas be pumped through pipelines from the Barent sea to a liquefying plant on the island Melkoya, to be then transported in tankers to the USA and central Europe.

In the Russian sector of the Barent sea also the search for raw materials is continuing without any regard for nature and the indigenous population, criticised the human rights organisation. By the year 2010 the Russian company Gazprom intends to start pumping oil in the Shtokman field together with Norsk Hydro, the US concern Chevron, Conoco Philipps and the French concern Total. The expectation is of finding there 3.2 trillion cubic metres of natural gas. The Russian concern Arktivshelfneftegaz has invested since 2002 about 50 million US dollars in the opening of three oil wells in the Barent sea.