Company Applies for Seismic Blasting Permit in Arctic Refuge
November 24, 2018

Update - 2/17/2019: The seismic blasting plan has been put on hold for the winter, a bit of good news in the battle against seismic blasting in the Arctic. The company intending to do the blasting asked that the start date be moved to next December but unfortunately the overall plan to open up 1.5 million acres of pristine wilderness to destruction and pollution by the oil and gas industry is still moving forward. The New York Times reported, "Steven C. Amstrup, chief scientist of the conservation group Polar Bears International, said the risk to the bears was that seismic trucks, which weigh up to 45 tons, could come close to or ride over dens, forcing the bears outside prematurely or even injuring or killing them." The trucks themselves can weigh up to 45 tons, causing damage to the incredibly fragile tundra and even altering the flow of surface water. There is actually still visible damage from seismic blasting done decades ago and there is also damage from seismic blasting trucks that operated near the refuge last April. The battle goes on but we are celebrating the fact that the species that would be harmed by the blasting are safe for the moment.

A polar bear cub stands on its hind legs while the mother stays nearby in a frozen area of the Beaufort Sea off the coast of Alaska, north of Point Barrow - the northernmost point of the United States.
credit: Kelley Elliott, Hidden Ocean 2005 Expedition, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration

The Sierra Club has issued an alert about possible seismic blasting, a step before oil drilling that identifies oil pockets, that could take place in the Arctic Refuge as early as December of this year. This is a day we feared might come once it was announced by the US government earlier this year that the Refuge could be opened to drilling. The Sierra Club stated that, "90,000-lb “thumper trucks” would send shock waves deep into the ground, carving tracks into the tundra and disturbing polar bear dens."

Seismic blasting, sometimes given the more innocent term 'seismic testing', is a threat to many species on land and in the oceans including North Atlantic and North Pacific right whales. Michael Jasny, Director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project, Land & Wildlife program at the Natural Resources Defense Council has stated in a post on the NRDC website, "For right whales, seismic blasting represents a major stressor and a source of widespread disruption—a threat to their ability to communicate, to breed, to maintain bonds between mothers and calves." The oil industry wanted to conduct underwater blasting in the Atlantic which would have presented a grave threat to North Atlantic right whales but in December of 2016 the Obama administration protected some areas of the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of the US from blasting and in January of 2017 six permit applications to conduct seismic blasting off the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast US coast were denied. It will be a struggle to make the protections there permanent but for now the North Atlantic right whales in those waters are at least safe from the noise from sonic blasts.

A letter from 75 marine scientists to President Obama in 2015 regarding blasting in the Atlantic Ocean discussed the horrific nature of blasting, stating that it involves "high-volume airguns, which fire approximately every 10-12 seconds, often for weeks or months at a time, with sound almost as powerful as that produced by underwater chemical explosives." The letter stated that, "In all, the activities contemplated by the Interior Department would result in more than 20 million seismic shots".

The increase in oil and gas exploration in the Arctic presents a major threat to the species that live there as well, along with the species that live in areas the tankers would go through to deliver the oil. Any tankers that take oil from the Artic and bring it through the Bering Sea present a threat to the highly endangered North Pacific right whales which number only between 30-50. The tanker traffic from pipelines such as the proposed Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion in Canada would also threaten North Pacific right whales along with the highly endangered Southern Resident orcas that only number approximately 74 at this point. We wrote more about this in a post from August that talked about the risks to these whales.

We stand in support of all species under attack by the oil and gas industry and strongly urge this company and the US government to cease any oil or gas extraction activity in the Arctic Refuge. However, we do understand that petitioning the government and asking companies to do the right thing has a limited effect, especially considering the extreme anti-environment views held by the current administration and the fact that these companies already know what they're doing is wrong. They know it will have a devastating effect on the species that live in these areas and they are going ahead with this oil drilling anyway. The only way they will stop is if the government forces them to or if it is not profitable.

However, we feel that it is still important to let them know that there is opposition to their plan and that while this industry and their supporters are clinging onto dangerous, unnatural sources of energy - and the terrible ways it's extracted from the earth - that the rest of us care about the species that .live in these areas. We want to protect all of the life on this planet that is affected by the extraction, transportation and consumption of oil and gas and repair the damage that these industries have already caused. This latest news about the potential drilling in the Arctic Refuge strengthens our resolve and makes the rest of us work even harder for a rapid switch to renewable energy and to permanently protect the last remaining wild areas of our planet.

Take Action:

The Sierra Club is asking for signatures for a letter to the company that has applied for this permit, asking them to stay out of the Arctic Refuge. You can sign the letter here: Tell SAExploration: Stay Out Of the Arctic Refuge

For more things we can all do in our everyday lives to help the polar bears and North Atlantic right whales that remain under threat from various forms human interference in their lives, we encourage our readers to visit our Action page that has more information on everything from reducing our energy usage to avoiding fertilizers wash into the ocean and cause harm to marine life.