It's only a matter of time before a spill happens, Greenpeace says

Dec 21, 2013 23:36 GMT  ·  By

This past December 20, Gazprom went public with the news that oil production had officially begun at an offshore field in the Arctic.

More precisely, the company announced that it had successfully produced the first commercial quantities of oil from the Prirazlomnaya field in the Pechora Sea.

This means that the Russian giant can now take pride in having become the first company ever to extract oil from the Arctic.

Gazprom might be jumping for joy at the thought of the success of its endeavor to drill for oil in this part of the world, but environmentalists are anything but pleased with how things have turned out.

In a statement, Faiza Oulahsen from the Netherlands, i.e. one of the Greenpeace activists arrested back in September following a protest against Gazprom and its plans for the Arctic, argued as follows:

“This is a dark day for the Arctic. Gazprom is the first company on Earth to pump oil from beneath icy Arctic waters and yet its safety record on land is appalling.”

“It is impossible to trust them to drill safely in one of the most fragile and beautiful regions on Earth. We must stop this trickle of Arctic oil before it becomes a flood,” the environmentalist added.

Both Greenpeace and other environmentalists who are utterly against drilling in the Arctic maintain that, given the harsh environmental conditions in this part of the world, there is no doubt that an oil spill will occur and cause tremendous harm to local ecosystems.

Thus, the organization maintains that, contrary to what they keep telling ordinary folks, companies such as Gazprom are not in the least equipped to deal with the freezing temperatures, the thick ice, the storms and the strong winds that are a thing of the day in the Arctic.

Hence, the question is not whether or not an oil spill will occur, but when this will happen.

“The offshore Arctic is the most inhospitable operating environment imaginable. Freezing temperatures, thick ice, months of perpetual twilight, giant storms and hurricane-force winds pose a unique technical risk to any oil company,” Greenpeace writes on its website,

“There is no proven way of cleaning oil spilled in ice and even a small accident would have devastating consequences on the Arctic’s fragile and little-understood environment,” it adds.