I’d rather be in good friends’company than keeping a blog on my own,gotta admit its quite tiring.
Same kind of posts and a touch of music in the Diary of my insomnia (oops got me a new blog title)
Thank you very much for reading my posts,for following,for forming a community. I really appreciate it. Hope to see you soon enough on the mentioned links- not redirecting any of you.
Anyone can use-copy-repost the blog archives,just please be kind enough to mention the source & the original one,thank you.And when i say you can use the archives I mean it. Just help yourselves 😉
Special thanks to my friend Moorbey for nominating this humble blog,thank you compañera
Thanks to my Malatesta friend 🙂 nada mal con tu testa
Thanks to all of you for your constant support.Without you this tiny blog would mean nothing.
All those links were sent to me on Twitter and I am more than glad to post them,I do beleive I will find more on those people due time.No threats allowed according to the WP policy or the HR declaration. So please stay vigilant of what you are going to post :)I checked all blog categories so that the post can get the most views possible. Regards!
“##Spiros Macrozonaris## IMMIGRANT Golden Dawn Deputy leader in Montreal, Canada” :
Facebook profile :
INTERESTING FACEBOOK POST MR. MACROZONARIS, HE CANNOT EVEN WRITE GREEK! BAD NAZI BAD! :
1. Greek Immigrant who married a “foreigner” >>>>>French-Canadian Doris Morrissette, they bore a son, Nicolas Macrozonaris (World-Class Sprinter – CANADIAN Olympian 🙂 ..who unfortunately is not 100% Pure Greek…
2. Conversations with Nicolas on Twitter, lead to nothing, he is ‘pretending’ that he has NO knowledge of what Golden Dawn supports and believes YET he states that he does not condone his fathers “actions”
Twitter @Macrozonaris TWEETER CONVERSATIONS with Nicolas –>
###### MUST WATCH #####
Video from CBC Montreal, from week of Oct 12th – INTERVIEW with Spiros Macrozonaris – next to him sits LOOSER Ilias Hondronicolas : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-3rbLI4K78
#Ilias Hondronicolas ———> on PHOTO second guy from the left :
#MORE HONDRONICOLAS: (FRIENDS WITH ELENI ZAROULIA SHARING HER PHOTOS!) ( MUST SEE )
Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
07BAGHDAD2453 2007-07-25 05:57 2011-08-30 01:44 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Baghdad
VZCZCXRO1627
OO RUEHBC RUEHDE RUEHIHL RUEHKUK
DE RUEHGB #2453/01 2060557
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 250557Z JUL 07
FM AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD
TO RUCNRAQ/IRAQ COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE
INFO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 2415
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 002453
SIPDIS
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/23/2017
TAGS: ECON ENRG IZ PREL
SUBJECT: CODEL BURGESS MEETING WITH MINISTER OF OIL HUSAYN
AL-SHAHRISTANI
Classified By: ECONOMIC MINISTER CHARLES P. RIES FOR REASONS 1.5 (b) an
d (d)
¶1. (C). SUMMARY. On July 22, Congressmen Michael Burgess
(R-TX), Steve King (R-IA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), John Carter
(R-TX), Kevin Brady (R-TX), and David Davis (R-TN) met with
Minister of Oil Husayn al-Shahristani to discuss issues
related to the state of Iraq,s petroleum infrastructure,
plans to improve the infrastructure and revitalize petroleum
exploration and production. Minister Shahristani
acknowledged the important role of the petroleum industry in
Iraq,s economy and the need for passage of the
hydrocarbon-related laws as signaling Iraq,s emergence as a
dominant petroleum producing country. END SUMMARY.
¶2. (C). Minister Shahristani introduced the topic of the
status of Iraq,s petroleum industry by observing that the
industry provides 93% of the country,s budget; that of the
500 known potential petroleum-bearing geophysical structures,
only about 80 have been evaluated and expected to make up the
majority of the 115 billion barrel reserve; and that of these
80 structures, 10 are “super giants,” 10 are “giants,” and 10
are “very large” structures. He also stated that most of
these 80 structures are currently in production although
perhaps not being optimally produced at this time.
Shahristani also predicted that of the 500 known structures,
300 will eventually produce commercial quantities of oil.
¶3. (C). Shahristani observed that even though private oil
companies have not been willing to work in Iraq as a result
of the security situation, the state-owned oil companies have
been able to drill some new wells. He also noted that while
the level of oil production in the country has not risen as
he desired, the rising price oil has allowed Iraq to more or
less maintain a level income from exports.
¶4. (C). Shahristani noted successes in having new meters
installed in the southern export facilities, but also noted
that if problems occur, it is likely the fault of the
American company that required an extra year to complete the
project. He predicted no interruption in oil exports from
the southern facilities, unless problems arise between Iran
and the United States. He encouraged the United States and
Iran to continue their dialogue to solve issues that impact
Iraq.
¶5. (C). A member of the Congressional delegation, having
toured the Bayji oil refinery yesterday asked what
infrastructure improvements were needed to increase the
refinery,s production potential. Shahristani stated that
while foreign companies were not willing to work in Iraq due
to the current security situation, he has asked that they
supply needed equipment, for example for the hydrocracker.
He also stated that he is attempting to replace trained
workers, originally from the south of the country, who have
fled the sectarian violence of the area.
¶6. (C). When asked about the Ministry of Oil,s budget,
Shahristani stated that he had a budget of $2.2 billion. He
complained that the Ministry of Finance had delayed the
allocation of funds for the first quarter of the year and
those funds were not available until the end of March. In
any event, he noted that by the second quarter, he had been
able to spend 25% of his budget and expects to spend 85% of
his budget by the end of the year.
¶7. (C). Shahristani explained that the Council of Ministers
had approved and sent to the Council of Representatives a law
that would encourage investment in Iraq,s oil refineries; he
expected a third reading of this law to occur soon. He
expressed support for the Framework Hydrocarbon Law stating
that “all the right elements were present in the law” and
promised that he would be in the Council of Representatives
(CoR) to explain the law. He also stated that while he could
not predict what the lawmakers would do, he anticipated its
eventual passage. He noted that he had already prepared a
list of those fields to be drilled and produced first.
¶8. (C). A member of the delegation asked about Chinese
exploration and production contracts. Shahristani answered
by explaining that there was one contract in existence with
the Chinese, which was legitimate and was signed by the
previous regime to develop a small field just south of
Baghdad (Adhab) and would produce no more than 100,000
barrels per day of heavy crude. He explained that under the
current draft of the framework Hydrocarbon law, such
contracts must be reviewed and meet the conditions of the new
law. He also stated that this contract would have to be
amended and that the production from this field was not for
export, but rather to supply crude oil to a refinery planned
to be constructed in the area by the Chinese.
BAGHDAD 00002453 002 OF 002
¶9. (C). A member of the delegation asked if the Iraqi
people understood that they could become rich from the
development of their petroleum resources, if only they would
cooperate with each other. Shahristani responded that the
people will not understand the details of the various
hydrocarbon-related laws, but will follow the impressions
created by others and the media. He proceeded to explain
that several local media stations are supported by members of
Saddam,s regime, living mostly in Jordan now, and by the
Saudis and Emirates. He characterized as more damaging, the
influence of Al-Jazeera. He stated that, in his opinion,
Saudi Arabia feels threatened by the prospect of a
significant Iraqi contribution to the international oil
market; Iraq was not a threat to the Saudis as long as
exports remained no greater than 2 to 3 million barrels.
¶10. (C). When asked about exports in the north, Shahristani
noted that the exports brought in about $400,000 per day and
that the Bayji refinery has limited production capacity.
(Note: In the absence of more explanation that was not
provided to the delegation, this statement appears at odds
with the fact that the export pipeline to Turkey operates
only intermittently. Also, the Bayji refinery capacity is
limited primarily by unreliable electricity supply and
limited heavy fuel oil storage capability. End Note.)
Shahristani also noted that northern exports were at the
mercy of the security situation. He stated that the
Strategic Infrastructure Brigades (SIBs) were established by
a “leader of the insurgency” and that he informed the
multi-national forces of this fact. He also stated that
contrary to the opinion of the multi-national force
commanders, the SIBs cannot be retrained to an effective
status. Shahristani stated his expectation that a new effort
to contract with local tribal leaders for security of the
pipelines will be more effective and lead to a resumption of
northern exports in one to two months.
¶11. (C). Addressing Congressional benchmarks, Shahristani
said that he expected the Framework Hydrocarbon and Revenue
Management Laws to proceed in tandem to the CoR and will be
debated together. He assessed that the refinery investment
law, already in the CoR, will be passed soon. He stated that
the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) has reservations about
the Revenue Management Law, but that KRG representatives will
be in Baghdad in a week, and that he expected the law will go
to the CoR within the next 2 to 3 weeks. He also stated
that, while no one has objection to the Revenue Management
Law in principle, Sunni factions were attacking it for
political reasons. Shahristani stated that there was also
strong Sunni opposition to the Framework Hydrocarbon Law, but
that he agreed with Ambassador Crocker that some Sunni
support for the law was needed.
¶12. (C). Shahristani was asked what he was doing to secure
the petroleum infrastructure in the event coalition forces
left Iraq. He responded that a withdrawal would not impact
the southern pipelines and other facilities since Coalition
Forces are not now protecting those facilities. As for the
northern facilities, he stated that the Bayji refinery could
be shut down, but that would have consequences equally
adverse for the insurgency.
¶13. (C). Shahristani reiterated that he was working hard to
meet the benchmarks, that half of the benchmarks were met and
that the other half could be met if government,s efforts
were supported by the Sunnis, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf
states. He requested that the USG pressure these other
entities to stop supporting the groups opposing Iraq,s
efforts to meet the remaining benchmarks.
¶14. (C). Minister Shahristani concluded the meeting with an
expression of determination that Iraq will export to the
world oil market “its fair share of resources.” He stated
that he wanted the American public to know that this conflict
was not about oil, but about Islamic fundamentalism. He also
stated that Al-Qaeda was a long-term problem for the world.
¶15. (C). CODEL Burgess did not have an opportunity to clear
this cable.
Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
07BAGHDAD3071 2007-09-12 06:02 2011-08-30 01:44 UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Embassy Baghdad
VZCZCXRO4961
PP RUEHBC RUEHDA RUEHDE RUEHIHL RUEHKUK
DE RUEHGB #3071/01 2550602
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 120602Z SEP 07
FM AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3336
INFO RUCNRAQ/IRAQ COLLECTIVE
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BAGHDAD 003071
SIPDIS
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: EPET EINV ENRG IZ
SUBJECT: HUNT OIL SIGNS AGREEMENT WITH KRG UNDER KRG OIL LAW
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED. NOT FOR INTERNET DISRIBUTION. PROTECT
SOURCES.
This is a Kurdistan Regional Reconstruction Team (RRT) cable.
SUMMARY
——-
¶1. (SBU) The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) recently signed a
production sharing contract (PSC) with Hunt Oil Company that covers
oil exploration and production in “the Dohuk area.” Comments by
Hunt officials indicate that the block is actually in the Ninewa
Governorate’s northern administrative districts. The PSC marks the
first oil deal signed by the KRG, following enactment of the
Kurdistan Region’s hydrocarbons law on August 6, 2007. Considerable
legal ambiguity surrounds the PSC with Hunt Oil, as the districts in
northern Ninewa to be explored by the company are classified as
“disputed territories” under the Iraqi constitution. A senior Hunt
Oil manager told RRT Erbil’s Team Leader that northern Ninewa
province has significant potential for oil production, and that this
factor trumps the legal ambiguities and risks associated with the
company’s PSC with the KRG. The oil potential of northern Iraq
continues to attract significant investor interest. Several other
international energy companies are expected to announce oil deals
with the KRG during coming weeks. Despite the KRG’s aggressive
pursuit of foreign direct investment to develop the Kurdistan
Region’s hydrocarbons production potential, KRG Prime Minister
Nechirvan reiterated the KRG’s commitment to the federal hydrocarbon
revenue sharing agreement that allocates Iraq’s oil wealth to all
Iraqis on a per capita basis. Meanwhile, senior central government
officials expressed their dismay that the KRG enacted a regional
hydrocarbons law, and that the KRG continues to pursue oil
investment from foreign companies in advance of enactment of
comprehensive national hydrocarbons legislation. [NOTE: The ability
of regional governments to sign contracts has been among the key
issues of contention during negotiation of the national hydrocarbon
law. The KRG has reluctantly agreed, at times. to refrain from
finalizing agreements in advance of a national law, but have
maintained that they would not wait indefinitely for national
legislation to be approved by the Council of Representatives. END
NOTE.]
KRG Contract with Hunt in Disputed Territory
——————————————–
¶2. (SBU) On September 8, 2007, the KRG, Hunt Oil Company, and
Impulse Energy Corporation (IEC) jointly announced they had signed a
PSC covering petroleum exploration activities “in the Dohuk area of
the Kurdistan Region.” Hunt Oil’s General Manager for Europe,
Africa and the Middle East, David McDonald, told RRT Erbil’s Team
Leader on September 5 that the envisioned “Dohuk area” of operations
under the PSC consists of the administrative districts of northern
Ninewa province. McDonald did not disclose the exact areas in
northern Ninewa to be initially targeted for exploration by Hunt Oil
but he mentioned Shekkan and Akra as areas they had visited. While
the land to be explored by Hunt Oil has been behind the Green Line
of KRG control for many years and is occupied by a majority Kurdish
population who considers itself part of Dohuk Governorate, the area
falls within the legal boundaries of Ninewa province. Northern
Ninewa is “disputed territory,” according to the Iraqi federal
constitution, and the legal boundaries of the area are eventually to
be decided by a public referendum pursuant to Article 140 of the
federal constitution.
¶3. (SBU) During discussions with RRT Erbil’s Team Leader, McDonald
seemed less than fully informed about the potential ramifications of
Article 140 on Hunt Oil’s negotiations with the KRG. He did not
express concern about the potential controversy surrounding
signature of a PSC with the KRG that covers areas of operation
currently outside the KRG’s legal control. He said, “This is a
significant opportunity that outweighs the legal ambiguity.” Hunt
Oil CEO Ray Hunt also discounted the fact that the northern Ninewa
districts targeted under the PSC are not yet within the KRG’s
legally defined borders. He expressed satisfaction on September 8
that his company was “actively participating in the establishment of
the petroleum industry in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.”
¶4. (U) Enactment of the KRG’s new oil law may have spurred
completion of the PSC with Hunt Oil. The PSC was announced shortly
after publication of the English translation of the new oil and gas
law on the KRG’s website. Before the law was enacted, only one PSC
had been signed for the Dohuk area – with DNO of Norway. That PSC
covered operations only within the legal boundaries of Dohuk
Governorate. Enactment of the KRG oil law and the subsequent
announcement of the deal with Hunt Oil may accelerate the signing of
PSCs with other international oil companies. Several are
reportedly on the verge of signing PSCs with the KRG during coming
weeks. Article 19 of the KRG law states that “the Federal
Government must not practice any new Petroleum Operations in the
disputed territories without the approval of [the KRG] until such
time as the referendum required by Article 140 of the Federal
Constitution is conducted.” Article 20, however, allows the KRG to
BAGHDAD 00003071 002 OF 003
sign PSCs with foreign oil companies in disputed territories, based
on articles 112, 115 and 121(3) of the Federal Constitution.
¶5. (SBU) While McDonald said Hunt Oil must conduct further
assessments about the speed and scope of their operational
activities in northern Ninewa, with decisions regarding the focus of
initial seismic tests to begin “by the end of October,” he was
optimistic about the oil potential of the region. McDonald said
portions of the topography in all three districts of northern Ninewa
bode well for oil exploration. He said, “It’s like shooting fish in
a barrel.” A Hunt Oil company spokesman in Dallas said the company
will begin geological survey and seismic work by the end of 2007,
with plans to be in a position to drill an exploration well in
¶2008.
¶6. (U) The KRG deal with Hunt Oil marks the first PSC signed with a
foreign oil company following KRG enactment of the Oil and Gas Law
of the Kurdistan Region on August 6, 2007. Speaking of the KRG’s
rationale in passing a controversial regional hydrocarbons law while
a draft national oil and gas law remains intensely debated, KRG
Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told reporters on August 7,
“Successive governments in Iraq have deliberately left our oil in
the ground as an effort to keep our people [ethnic Kurds] poor and
to deny our aspirations for a better way of life. Today, with the
passage of this new Kurdistan Law in a federal Iraq, we know that
those days are gone.”
¶7. (U) While espousing the benefits of foreign direct investment in
the Kurdistan Region’s oil producing areas, Nechirvan acknowledged
federal constitution provisions that require any oil revenues
generated under the KRG’s hydrocarbons law to be shared equally with
all Iraqis. He confirmed the KRG intends to limit itself to its
constitutionally mandated share of national oil revenues, regardless
of whether the oil is sourced inside or outside the Kurdistan
Region. He said, “We will receive 17 percent of all revenues from
all oil production in all of Iraq.”
¶8. (U) KRG Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami echoed those
comments. Hawrami said on September 9, “We believe that the [KRG’s]
production-sharing agreements are the best way to move swiftly
forward and help not just the Kurds but all Iraqis.” He envisions
that the Kurdistan Region will produce one million barrels of oil
per day within five years. To achieve this goal, the KRG intends to
sign PSCs with other large international oil companies. On
September 9, Hawrami told Dow Jones, “I think we’ll be having an
announcement with a blue-chip company soon.”
While Criticizing Central Government Paralysis
——————————————— –
¶9. (SBU) Following passage of the KRG hydrocarbons law, KRG
officials recommitted themselves to the February 2007 national
hydrocarbons framework agreement. Nechirvan told RRT Erbil’s Team
Leader on August 28 that he hoped the new KRG law “would spur
movment in Baghdad” to enact a national hydrocarbons law. During
that meeting, however, Nechirvan expressed disappointment with
political developments in Baghdad and pessimism about “whether the
Sunnis and the Shi’a want to live together.” He said the KRG does
not want Iraq’s central government to “hold up development of
regional resources for another ten years.”
Arab Leaders Critical of KRG Oil Law
————————————
¶10. (U) Senior central government officials in Baghdad condemned the
oil deals signed by the KRG in advance of enactment of national
hydrocarbons legislation. Abdul Hadi al Hasani, Deputy Chairman of
the national parliament’s Energy Committee, said recently that such
contracts may be overturned by the federal government, though he
conceded that such a move could discourage potential foreign
investments in Iraq’s oil sector. Sami al Askari, a parliamentarian
and senior advisor to Prime Minister al Maliki, told reporters on
September 7 that a federal oil and gas council to be formed under
the national hydrocarbons law could decide whether to rescind the
KRG’s handful of oil contracts with foreign investors. In a
concession to the reality that foreign direct investment in Iraq’s
oil infrastructure remains both valuable and scarce, the
parliamentarians said the private firms that signed deals with the
KRG should not be blocked from winning future oil contracts in
Iraq.
COMMENT
¶11. (SBU) USG policy has discouraged companies from signing oil
deals with the KRG until Iraq enacts its national hydrocarbon
framework law, as such regional contracts could act as an impediment
to negotiations toward a comprehensive national settlement that
equitably distributes Iraq’s oil wealth. Such contracts also remain
subject to significant legal ambiguity. This has not deterred Hunt
Oil and the other handful of companies that have signed PSCs with
BAGHDAD 00003071 003 OF 003
the KRG. Their concerns about the nebulous political environment
and possible eventual dissolution of their PSCs have been overridden
by the prospect of huge profits – from getting first access to the
choicest oil exploration fields in northern Iraq, and from
establishing productive relationships with key KRG and central
government officials. The potential pitfalls are especially acute
in cases (e.g. Hunt Oil and its junior partner IEC) where investors
will commence operations in disputed territories. It remains
doubtful that the KRG was legally entitled to enter into a binding
contract with Hunt Oil that covers oil exploration and eventual
hydrocarbons production in an area (i.e. northern Ninewa province)
that the KRG does not legally control. Legal considerations aside,
the KRG’s actions complicates enactment of a national hydrocarbons
law.
BUTENIS
Those are some of the missing greek cables from Wikileaks.Certainly those few and past ones do not satisfy nobody. What happened with the submarines german deal,what happened with Siemens and ex Minister Tsoxatzopoulos,What has happened with the Aegean and which are the surprises we haven’t seen yet.Wikileakes reveals nothing more than what a common tabloid has already. Sorry guys,I used to be a supporter
The Syrian files were released including a helluva of greek corporate names, but where the hell is the proof? Where is the Alcatel Cables? the Syrian Assad communication cables with the Italo- Greek communication Services? THIS CONSTITUTES A CRIME AGAINST NATIONS,MAINLY SYRIA AND THEN ITALY AND GREECE
Whoever decided to hide those cables he should be considered an accessory to PEACE crimes
“Many who oppose the amendments have focused on what they call the “commercialization” of the public university education or “surrender of public universities to private interests.””
Comment [US]: “We have long pushed for the GoG to recognize degrees from private institutions, which would, among other things, benefit private U.S. higher learning institutions already here”
“In the face of continuing, mass student protests and demonstrations, Education Minister Yiannakou announced on June 13 that she would postpone submitting the draft bill on education reforms during the summer parliament recess as originally planned”
Comment [US]: “The government’s postponement in the face of student protests is disappointing to us: a number of U.S.-based private, non-profit universities operating here would benefit from these reforms”
“Gazprom’s growing stranglehold on European energy supplies, particularly in the area of natural gas, has the potential to reduce these countries’ diplomatic freedom of movement in support of U.S. diplomatic goals”
“Improving these countries’ energy security and diversity of supply options can therefore improve U.S. national security”
“One key element of this overall strategy is maximizing the opportunity provided by the new Turkey-Greece-Italy natural gas interconnector, currently under construction, to bring Caspian gas to Europe”
The U.S. Strategy:
“All agreed that it is imperative to promote energy diversification strategies that encompass the development of additional energy sources and suppliers to provide vulnerable SE and SCE countries with alternatives to Gazprom”
“To confront Gazprom domination, there must be a concerted effort to diversify and develop multiple gas pipelines from the Caspian to Europe”
“Turkey’s Role — as Transit Country or as Reseller — Must Be Clarified”
“During the conference it became clear that the key problem vis-a-vis Turkey is its aspirations to become an energy reseller, extracting (it hopes) greater profits from gas trade than it would as a simple gas transit country”
“The Russian Strategy: Gazprom”
“Firstly, what kind of a company is Gazprom? According to conference participants, Gazprom,s risk-averse business model seeks to consolidate all aspects of gas production, transportation, and delivery into a vertically integrated operation”
“Moreover, Gazprom’s predatory behavior towards potential competitors seeks to expand its reach horizontally. The result is the creation of a “super” monopoly”
“Once the deal is struck, however, Gazprom has been utilizing its market power to extract concessions from the customer, whether in new pricing agreements, increased preferential access to transit capacity, or frequently, in majority or strong minority control of local gas companies”
“The Burgas-Alexandroupolis Project: “The B-A project was originally conceived in 1994 as a project to relieve tanker traffic through the congested Bosporus strait”
The 285-kilometer cross-border pipeline is designed to carry Russian oil from the Bulgarian port of Burgas to the Greek port of Alexandroupolis in northern Greece”
“The project has an estimated investment cost of 750-800 million US dollars with an annual capacity of 35 million tonnes of oil”
“During a December 17-18 visit to Moscow, Greek PM Karamanlis signed with Russian President Putin and Bulgarian President Parvanov an agreement establishing a company to construct the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline through Bulgaria and Greece”
“We have told the Greeks the U.S. has no problem with better Greek-Russian ties. At the same time, we continue to ask how Greece can reconcile its support for the Turkey-Greece-Italy gas inter-connector with the competing South Stream project — a question to which we have yet to receive an adequate reply”
“The IGA, he said, includes provisions that: an international holding company (Societe Anonyme) will be established for the portion of South Stream that passes through Greek territory, jointly and equally owned by Gazprom and the Greek Pipeline Transmission Operator (DESFA)”
“Despite strong statements at NATO and the EU by FM Bakoyannis supporting Georgian territorial integrity and condemning Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, the GOG at the same time is moving ahead with several “business-as-usual” events with Russia, including a visit this week of a Russian defense industry team to discuss arms purchases, the impending Parliamentary ratification of the South Stream gas pipeline deal with Russia, and co-sponsorship with Russia of a major cultural event marking 180 years of Greek-Russian diplomatic relations”
“Embassy will continue to press the GOG to delay or cancel these events to avoid undercutting NATO and EU positions”
“The Greeks currently tend to overstate both their contributions and their importance to the United States, and there is no need to accept the Greek hyperbole. But some of the facts of this cooperation speak for themselves”
“The GOG has proven to be a very cooperative partner at Souda Bay, though it does not advertise this for domestic political reasons”
“New Minister of Defense Evangelos Venizelos recently told Parliament that he will take an “extremely cautious” view towards NATO’s Strategic Concept, that he wants to avoid Aegean tensions but will resist flagrant Turkish violations of international law and threats of violence, and that he wants to reduce defense spending to average OSCE levels”
“die Gründe für das Nichtfunktionieren liegen auf der Hand: Kein Land kann sich aus einer Krise “heraussparen””
“die drakonischen Maßnahmen strafen die falschen, sie bringen die Realwirtschaft zum Absturz und lassen die eigentlichen Verursacher – die “Märkte” – ungeschoren davonkommen”
“Retten könnte uns nur noch ein radikaler Politikwechsel innerhalb der EU – also gleichsam ein Streik gegen jene Kräfte, die derzeit drauf und dran sind, die Grundlagen der Gemeinschaft zu ruinieren”
“klar ist, dass es darum geht, die vielzitierten “Märkte” – die geballte Macht der Finanzindustrie – in die Schranken zu weisen und die “Polis” – das Gemeinsame, die Demokratie – zu retten”
During the second half of 2009, Iraq held two auctions of its largest oilfields, awarding them to multinational companies such as BP, Shell and ExxonMobil to operate under 20-year contracts. Between them the oilfields account for over 60% of Iraq’s reserves. The contracts were service contracts rather than the companies’ preferred production sharing agreements, which had been proposed for Iraq but rejected as giving too much away.
Media reports of the auction focused on the headline remuneration fees. These sounded so low – between $1.15 and $5.50 per barrel – that many commentators questioned the profitability of the deals. But as always in oil contracts, the devil is in the detail. And whereas the auctions were billed by the Iraqi government as among the world’s most transparent contracting processes, the first contract, for the super-giant Rumaila field near Basra, was privately renegotiated between the Iraqi government and the winning BP/CNPC consortium for more than three months after the auction.The result was that the terms changed significantly from the published model contract on which the auction was based, to make it much more attractive to BP and CNPC, at the expense of the Iraqi people.
We have obtained the renegotiated Rumaila contract, and can reveal its contents for the first time. The major changes are explained in the report “From Glass Box to Smoke Filled Room – How BP secretly renegotiated its Iraqi oil contract, and how Iraqis will pay the price”, written by Fuel on the Fire author Greg Muttitt and published by PLATFORM.
DOCUMENT 12: the original model contract, on which the auction was based. DOCUMENT 13: the leaked, renegotiated contract, which was actually signed.
Also in today’s release:
Another document released today reveals the possible reason BP was so successful in changing the terms in its favour, by focusing on the detailed terms of the contract. In April 2009, Ministry of Oil officials travelled to the UK to explore how to meet their training needs. Just two months before the auction, foremost among the areas where they sought training were commercial and negotiating skills. And the training provider they went to? BP!
DOCUMENT 14: Letter from BP to Iraq Ministry of Oil, 28 April 2009.
The contracts were opposed by many in Iraq, including oil experts, the management of the South Oil Company (which would have to work with BP on the Rumaila field), the oil trade union and the parliamentary oil and gas committee. When parliamentarians called in the Iraqi Oil Minister for questioning about the contract, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wrote to the speaker of parliament to warn against the move. In the private and confidential letter, released today, he told the speaker that he would consider such questioning to be “in harmony” with recent major terrorist bombings in Baghdad.
DOCUMENT 15: Letter from Nouri al-Maliki to parliament, October 2009 (Arabic original)
DOCUMENT 16: Letter from Nouri al-Maliki to parliament, October 2009 (English translation)
Two documents are published today, revealing for the first time the role of the Energy Infrastructure Planning Group, whose purpose was to plan for the running of Iraq’s oil industry during the period of direct U.S. occupation and administration of Iraq (under the CPA of Paul Bremer, as it became).
EIPG was established in summer 2002 by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. It was led by Michael Mobbs, a political appointee in the Department of Defense. The other members were Michael Makovsy of the Department of Defense, Seneca Johnson of the Department of State, Clark Turner of the Department of Energy (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) and a CIA analyst.
The EIPG did the thinking behind the subject, and made recommendations to the Deputies and Principals Committees of the National Security Council (comprising the heads and second-in-commands of the government agencies relevant to national security).
They were obtained from the Department of Defense under the Freedom of Information Act. This is the first clear evidence, more than nine years on, that Bush administration officials were planning before the war to open the way to multinational oil companies, an assertion consistently denied by the government.
DOCUMENT 17: a briefing to the Deputies Committee on November 6, 2002. The main topic of the meeting is how to spend the proceeds from Iraqi oil.
See especially page 10, where weighing up whether to repair war-damaged Iraqi oil infrastructure, one of the cons is that it “could deter private sector involvement”. Although this route was rejected (see DOCUMENT 18), it could later be seen in the U.S. forces’ failure to stop looting of the infrastructure in April 2003 (they only protected the Oil Ministry building, which held the irreplaceable geological data – they did nothing to protect drill rigs, pump stations etc). The attitude was seen again when the Oil Ministry’s considerable human resources were cleared out in fall 2003, in favor of friends and family of the new oil minister.
Note also on the contents page (2) the EIPG planned to consider later that month “whether to use control of Iraqi oil to advance important U.S. foreign policy objectives”. DOD reports that it holds no record of such discussions. They are likely to involve not direct U.S. energy interests, but whether to tear up eg Russian and Chinese contracts in order to harm those countries.
(The briefing was stored by the DOD as landscape printed on portrait paper – hence the edges are cut off in the official archive too!). DOCUMENT 18: a briefing to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on January 11, 2003, incorporating comments and decisions from earlier Deputies meetings.
Here the option of leaving war damage unrepaired so as to make room for Big Oil has been rejected, in favor of appointing Halliburton subsidiary KBR to carry out repairs (page 5).
Priorities are set of restoring crude oil production (which the USA needed) over electricity and fuel (which Iraqis needed – page 6).
Increasing Iraqi production to 5 million barrels per day (from 2.5m bpd) is favored as it “helps consumers” and “puts long-term downward pressure on the oil price”
Strikingly, “pubic diplomacy” (page 4) means the message that would be given to the public, including saying that “we will act… so as not to prejudice Iraq’s future decisions” – even though the opposite is proposed as substantive policy. In other words, the briefing recommends that the Bush administration mislead the public on how it would approach Iraqi oil.
These five documents are minutes of meetings about Iraq between the UK government and oil companies BP and Shell, ion the six months before the war. They were reported in the Independent on 19 April 2011.
The documents do not demonstrate that oil was the reason for the war. But they do show that during the preparations for war, oil was a central concern for the UK government, disproving its claims that it was not interested in Iraq’s oil.
The documents also provide a remarkable insight into the interaction between oil companies and government, at the highest levels. We see that the government needed no persuasion that it should help the companies – the civil servants clearly saw themselves as on the same side as the oilmen. The companies could barely contain their excitement about Iraq – “the big oil prospect”, as BP put it in one meeting (DOCUMENT 3) – and the tone is quite unlike that usually seen in minutes of government meetings. The companies and government officials alike had no doubt that a war would take place, months before the parliamentary vote and while the government struggling (unsuccessfully) to persuade the UN Security Council to pass resolution authorising the war.
From the company perspective, the main purpose of the meetings was to ensure that they got their share (as they saw it) of Iraqi oilfields after the war. They were especially worried that the US government would naturally favour US companies, and might offer other fields to French, Russian or Chinese companies in exchange for their governments’ support in the UN Security Council. Tony Blair had already pledged British participation in the war, and so the British companies feared that with no bargaining power they’d be left out.
Trade Minister Baroness Symons – a staunch Blairite and active member of the British American Project, which had aimed since the 1980s to align the Labour Party’s foreign policy with that of the USA – was present in two of the meetings. She said [DOCUMENT 2] that “It would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis”. In other words, if British forces fight in a war then British companies should get a share of the spoils. This view is clearly unethical, but is also arguably illegal, under the Fourth Hague Convention.
BP and Shell both claimed that no such meetings took place. These minutes show such claims to be untrue. When invited to explain the discrepancy, both companies declined to comment. For her part, Symons said to Parliament in April 2003 that Iraq’s oil was “the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used for their benefit, and for their benefit alone” – this was not what she said in private to the oil companies.
For more commentary on these documents, including the companies’ objectives and their history of deals with the Saddam regime, please see Chapter Four of Fuel on the Fire. For more on the UK and US governments’ strategic oil objectives, please see Chapter Three.
DOCUMENT 1 – Meeting of Edward Chaplin (Middle East Director, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO)) with Tony Wildig (Senior Vice President for New Business in Middle East, Shell), 2 October 2002.
Chaplin: “Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in it for the sake of their long-term future… We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq.”
DOCUMENT 2 – Meeting of Baroness Liz Symons (Trade Minister) with representatives of BP (Richard Paniguian, Tony Renton), Shell (John Withrington, Gavin Graham) and BG (Bethell), 31 October 2002.
BP: Iraq “would provide an immense strategic advantage to any company which emerged in a commanding position”
Symons: “Anything of this nature would be highly sensitive and kept very close”.
DOCUMENT 3 – Meeting of Michael Arthur (Head of Economic Policy, FCO) with Richard Paniguian (Group Vice President for Russia, the Caspian, Middle East and Africa), 6 November 2002.
“Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there.”
BP: “Vitally important – more important than anything we’ve seen for a long time.”
DOCUMENT 4 – Meeting of Baroness Symons with Richard Paniguian and Tony Renton (Commercial Director Middle East, BP), 4 December 2002
Discussion of US planning efforts for Iraqi oil. “It was clear that Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the INC [Iraq National Congress] had a key role in selecting who was involved in these groups”.
“BP believed that the US authorities need to start giving some serious consideration to a number of issues on the future of Iraq’s oil industry including Iraq’s role in OPEC, the role of both existing and future Oil Ministry and State Owned Oil Company.”
Note that BP wanted more involvement of Iraqi expertise – presumably for greater stability for any investment.
DOCUMENT 5 – Meeting of John Browne (Chief Executive, BP) with Michael Jay (Permanent Undersecretary, FCO), 18 March 2003
This meeting took place less than 48 hours before bombs started falling on Baghdad, at the highest level: the head of BP with the most senior civil servant in the FCO. Of Jay’s five predecessors in that role, four had become directors of oil and gas companies on retirement from government service (two at Shell and one each at BP and BG).
BP had a team ready. But in the longer-term development of Iraq’s oilfields “They would not wish to be involved unless they were clear that administrative and other structures were in place to ensure that their involvement would be acceptable to whatever government followed military action”. This political conservatism by the major oil companies would shape the evolution of Iraqi oil policy during the early years of the occupation. Note however that Browne did not apparently make the more common point that such deals would have to be legal.
These three documents set out the British government’s objectives for Iraqi oil, and its strategies for how to achieve them. They were reported in the Independent on 20 April 2011.
The documents stand in stark contrast to public claims by the government that it had no interest in Iraq’s oil. For example, Tony Blair said in February 2003 that “The oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it.” Three months later, a Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) strategy paper (DOCUMENT 6) would declare, “The future shape of the Iraqi oil industry will affect oil markets, and the functioning of OPEC, in both of which we have a vital interest.” That paper was written less than two weeks after President Bush declared “mission accomplished” on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The nature of British and American interests in Iraqi and Middle Eastern oil is explored in Chapter 3 of Fuel on the Fire. It is not as simple as to ‘take the oil’ (as Donald Trump has been saying over the last few weeks as a launchpad for his presidential campaign). And nor is it just about getting contracts for their own companies, although that was a secondary aim, as discussed in the pre-war Whitehall meetings. The most important strategic interest lay in expanding global energy supplies, through foreign investment, in some of the world’s largest oil reserves – in particular Iraq. This meshed neatly with the secondary aim of securing contracts for their companies. Note that the strategy documents released here tend to refer to “British and global energy supplies”. British energy security is to be obtained by there being ample global supplies – it is not about the specific flow, as if physical Iraqi oil goes to China rather than Europe, another source (say, in Africa) can be re-rerouted from China to Europe in its place.
Chapters 9 and 11 of Fuel on the Fire look at how Britain and the USA sought to achieve their oil objectives during the early years of the occupation (before the formation of a permanent government in 2006). Those chapters contextualise and interpret these three British strategy documents; they also reflect on the favoured euphemism of “advice” (which implies that Iraqi leaders were independently able to take or leave the advice).
DOCUMENT 6 – Iraqi oil and British interests, FCO paper, 12 May 2003
As its title suggests, this document is quite blunt about British interests, not bothering to dress up its proposals as being in Iraqi interests. And it notes the interplay between British energy security and commercial interests.
DOCUMENT 7 – Management change in the Iraqi oil sector, 27 May 2003
Two weeks later, this document was prepared for an interdepartment meeting of the government’s Oil Sector Liaison Group, comprising officials from the FCO, the Treasury, the Department of Trade & Industry and the Department for International Development.
Unlike the previous document, this expresses its aims as being in the interests of Iraqis – yet of the seven items in the objectives list on page 4, five are quite plainly British rather than Iraqi concerns. Even the other two (the 4th and 5th) are only what outsiders imagine Iraqi concerns to be, rather inaccurately.
Note especially the aim for Iraq to be a role model for the other major oil countries in the region, and the call for it to remain within OPEC but as an advocate of lower oil prices.
DOCUMENT 8 – UK Energy Strategy for Iraq, September 2004
This too was an interdepartmental paper, and is quite clear about how Britain would influence the evolving Iraqi oil policy. Note especially the recognition that Iraqis won’t like the plans.
On March 23, 1989 the Exxon Valdez an oil supertanker operated by Exxon and under the command of Captain Joseph J. Hazelwood left the port of Valdez headed for Long beach, CA with 53,094,510 gallons of oil on board. Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, the supertanker collided with Bligh Reef, a well known navigation hazard, ruptured 8 of its 11 cargo tanks and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine waters of Prince William Sound. The result was catastrophic. Although the spill was radioed in shortly after the collision Exxon’s response was slow. In fact, there was no recovery effort for three days while Exxon searched for clean up equipment. During that time millions of gallons of oil began to spread down the coast. Days later as the clean up effort began the oil slick was no longer containable. It eventually extended 470 miles to the southwest, contaminated hundreds of miles of coastline and utterly destroyed the ecosystem.
[PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THE THREE IMAGE LINKS SO YOU CAN UNDERSTAND,THANKS]
Photo Credit: Composite done by the Exxon Valdez Trustee Council from an original map by the Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation.
Description: Blue areas illustrate oil slick spread of 11,000 sq. miles.
These are the well known facts of the spill but there is much more to the story. Here is the Whole Truth. The history of the spill really began back in 1973 when Congress authorized the Trans-Alaska pipeline. This allowed oil companies including Exxon to access the crude oil from Alaska’s North Slope and transport it to the lower 48 states. While this meant great wealth for the oil companies it also jeopardized the waters of the Prince William Sound and the fisheries which drove the economy in the region.
Exxon, along with the rest of the oil industry knew that navigating a large supertanker through the icy and treacherous waters of Prince William Sound was extremely complicated. It also knew that Alaska was not equipped to contain a large oil spill. In fact the contingency plan in place at the time acknowledged that a spill over 8.4 million gallons could not be contained and would result in long term consequences. Armed with this knowledge the oil companies promised to use great care to avoid a spill.
Exxon broke that promise. Despite the risk of a spill, Exxon knowingly allowed Captain Hazelwood, a relapsed alcoholic, to command its supertanker through these treacherous waters. For nearly three years before the spill Exxon officials ignored repeated reports of Hazelwood’s relapse and failed to enforce its substance abuse policies. In fact, Hazelwood was allowed to continue operating the supertanker even though his driver’s license had been revoked for operating a motor vehicle under the influence.
It was no surprise that on the evening of March 23, 1989 Hazelwood visited two local bars and consumed between 5 and 9 double shots (15 to 27 ounces of 80 proof alcohol) before boarding the ship. Even though he was the only officer on board licensed to navigate through Prince William Sound, in his drunken state, he turned the helm over to a fatigued third mate who was not qualified to steer the ship. Shortly thereafter, as the Exxon Valdez picked up speed it left the shipping lanes and collided with Bligh Reef. Today the Exxon Valdez oil spill is still considered the worst oil spill in our nation’s history.
The first call
Hazelwood radios in to inform the Valdez Traffic Center he has hit Bligh Reef with the ExxonValdez oil tanker.
Excerpt of transcript of radio transmission recorded by the Vessel Traffic Center, Valdez, Alaska on March 23 and 24, 1989 relating to the grounding of the Exxon Valdez.
HAZELWOOD: Yeah. Ah, it’s VALDEZ back. Ah, we’ve— ah, should be on your radar there— we’ve fetched up, ah, hard aground north of, ah, Good Island off Bligh Reef. And, ah, evidently, ah, leaking some oil, and, ah, we’re gonna be here for a while. And, ah, if you want, ah, so you’re notified. Over.
Exxon promised to make Prince William Sound whole again.
WATCH NOW
Alaska President of Exxon, Dan Cornett, spoke to the citizens of Prince William Sound and promised to make them whole. This is an excerpt of this speech, filmed during a community meeting in Prince William Sound following the oil spill.”
Written transcript:
MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Is Exxon shipping company prepared to reimburse commercial fisherman for the lost income, fisheries –
DAN CORNETT: You won’t have a problem. I don’t care if you believe that, that’s the truth. You have had some good luck and you don’t realize it. You have Exxon and we do business straight.
MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Don’t stand up there and lie to us.
DAN CORNETT: We will consider whatever it takes to keep you whole. Now, that’s– you have my word on that. Dan Cornett. I told you that.
The U.S. Government has at times orchestrated and participated in the cover-up, suppression, and or the delay in release of scientific findings related to historical events, sometimes based on sound reasoning out of a calculated sense of duty to ensure the survival of the Republic, and even the human race, while at other times out of what can only be characterized as arrogance or paranoid delusion and a sense of entitlement by a certain class of individuals that believe democracy works better in the shadows than in the light of day.
Of the more recent and perhaps unintentional cover-ups is that of the facts, findings, and lessons learned on the March 24th, 1989 Alaskan Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Complicit in the cover-up are a few corporate bag-men, slick revolving-door lobbyists, corrupt politicians, and bought and paid for mainstream news media mouthpieces that through greed, lies, omissions, misinformation, political pandering, double-speak, and ignorance of the past, now have a black stain on their hands that will not wash away anytime soon, no sooner at least than the sorrow of a nation. This book will hopefully bring much of this information to the light of day.
Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, oil persists in the region and, in some places, “is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill,” according to the council overseeing restoration efforts.
“This Exxon Valdez oil is decreasing at a rate of 0-4 percent per year,” the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council stated in a report marking Tuesday’s 20th anniversary of the worst oil spill in U.S. waters. “At this rate, the remaining oil will take decades and possibly centuries to disappear entirely.”
The council’s findings come two decades after the March 24, 1989 disaster, when the single-hulled Exxon tanker hit a reef, emptying its contents into Alaskan waters. The spill contaminated more than 1,200 miles of shoreline and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds and marine animals.
Captain convicted of misdemeanor
The council, made up of three state and three federal appointees, was created to administer the $900 million that Exxon paid to settle lawsuits filed after the accident, which also resulted in criminal charges against the ship’s captain, Joseph Hazelwood.
Hazelwood, was accused but then acquitted on a charge of being drunk at the time. He was, however, convicted of negligent discharge of oil, a misdemeanor, and sentenced to a $50,000 fine and 1,000 hours of community service.
In the weeks and months following the spill, thousands of people tried to clean up the contamination. But two decades later, oil persists and is estimated to total around 20,000 gallons, according to the council. One of the lessons learned is that a spill’s impacts can last a long time in a habitat with calm, cold waters like Prince William Sound, the council said.
“Following the oil and its impacts over the past 20 years has changed our understanding of the long-term damage from an oil spill,” the council stated. “We know that risk assessment for future spills must consider what the total damages will be over a longer period of time, rather than only the acute damages in the days and weeks following a spill.”
“One of the most stunning revelations” from studies over the last decade, the council said, “is that Exxon Valdez oil persists in the environment and, in places, is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill.”
As a result, some sea otter populations as well as bird species have been slow to recover. Overall, some 200,000 seabirds and 4,000 otters were thought to have died from the contamination.
Oil found 450 miles away
Moreover, surveys “have documented lingering oil also on the Kenai Peninsula and the Katmai coast, over 450 miles away,” according to the council.
None of that was expected “at the time of the spill or even ten years later,” it added. “In 1999, beaches in the sound appeared clean on the surface. Some subsurface oil had been reported in a few places, but it was expected to decrease over time and most importantly, to have lost its toxicity due to weathering. A few species were not recovering at the expected rate in some areas, but continuing exposure to oil was not suspected as the primary cause.”
It turns out that oil often got trapped in semi-enclosed bays for weeks, going up and down with the tide and some of it being pulled down into the sediment below the seabed.
“The cleanup efforts and natural processes, particularly in the winter, cleaned the oil out of the top 2-3 inches, where oxygen and water can flow,” the council said, “but did little to affect the large patches of oil farther below the surface.”
Sea otter concerns
That area is also biologically rich with mussels, clams and other marine life that help sustain sea otters and ducks.
“Sea otters usually have very small home ranges of a few square kilometers,” the council said. “In these small ranges, it is unlikely that the otters are avoiding areas of lingering oil when foraging.
As a result, “while overall population numbers in western Prince William Sound have recovered, local populations in heavily oiled areas have not recovered as quickly.”
There is a plus side to the foraging by otters, since digging in oiled areas does release the contaminants to the water, where they are diluted and dispersed.
Bird concerns
The American Bird Conservancy issued its own warning, stating that while many bird species have recovered several significant ones have not.
The spill killed 5-10 percent of the world’s population of Kittlitz’s Murrelets, the group said, a species whose numbers declined 99 percent from 1972 to 2004.
“Prior to the spill, the rate of decline was 18 percent per year, but since 1989 that rate has increased to 31 percent,” the group stated. “The growing impact of global warming in the Arctic and the melting of glaciers, caused by the burning of oil and other fossil fuels, may also be a factor in this decline.”
Two other species cited are: the Pigeon Guillemot, whose populations have steadily declined throughout the sound since the spill; and the Marbled Murrelet, which has not met the recovery objective of a stable population.
The group cited a faster transition to double-hulled oil tankers as the best protection for wildlife. Single-hulled tankers are still allowed in U.S. waters until 2015.
“A similar requirement for double-hulled tankers needs to be made globally to protect birds and other wildlife from future spills,” said Michael Fry, the group’s conservation director. “Additional marine reserves and no-go zones for tankers during sensitive breeding and staging seasons should also be implemented to protect the most vulnerable species.”[read more]
Here are some of the most startling statistics about the effects of the Exxon Valdez spill on marine wildlife, fisheries and the region’s economy:
The amount of oil spilled could fill 125 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
As many as 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 900 bald eagles and 250,000 seabirds died in the days following the disaster.
1,300 miles of coastline were hit by the oil spill.
1,000 harlequin ducks were killed by the oil spill, in addition to many chronic injuries that occurred as a result of the long term effects of the spill.
The cleanup required about 10,000 workers, 1,000 boats and roughly 100 airplanes and helicopters.
Four deaths were directly associated with cleanup efforts.
The spill caused over $300 million of economic harm to more than 32 thousand people whose livelihoods depended on commercial fishing.
Tourism spending decreased by eight percent in south central Alaska and by 35 percent in southwest Alaska in the year after the spill.
There was a loss of 9,400 visitors and $5.5 million in state spending.
Many fish populations were harmed during the spill. For example, sand lance populations went down in 1989 and 1990, herring returns were significantly fewer in 1992 and 1994 and adult fish had high rates of viral infections.
Pink salmon embryos continued to be harmed and killed by oil that remained on stones and gravel of stream banks through at least 1993. As a result, the southwestern part of Prince William Sound lost 1.9 million or 28 percent of its potential stock of wild pink salmon. By 1992, this part of the sound still had 6 percent less of the wild pink salmon stock than was estimated to have existed if the spill had not occurred.
Two years following the Exxon Valdez spill, the economic losses to recreational fishing were estimated to be $31 million.
Twelve years after the spill, oil could still be found on half of the 91 randomly selected beaches surveyed.
Three species of cormorant, the common loon, the harbor seal, the harlequin duck, the pacific herring and the pigeon guillemot still have not fully recovered.
1. Gulf War Oil Spill
Tons spilled: 1,360,000-1,500,000
In January 1991, Iraqi forces deliberately released more than 240 million gallons of crude oil into the Persian Gulf in an attempt to thwart an amphibious landing by the U.S. Marines. The resulting oil slick ravaged the area’s marine ecosystem, killing thousands of seabirds and endangering other wildlife. To date, it remains the worst disaster of its kind.
2. Ixtoc I
Tons spilled: 454,000-480,000
The exploratory oil well Ixtoc I exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on June 3, 1979, spewing 140 million gallons of oil into the open sea. It took control experts more than nine months to cap the spill and begin cleanup. Thousands of endangered sea turtles were airlifted to safety when the oil slick encroached upon their nesting site.
3. The Atlantic Empress and the Aegean Captain
Tons spilled: 287,000
On July 19, 1979, two gigantic supertankers collided off the Caribbean island of Little Tobago during a tropical rainstorm. The accident killed 26 crew members and dumped millions of gallons of crude oil into the sea.
4. Fergana Valley
Tons spilled: 285,000
In March 1992, 88 million gallons of oil spilled from a well in Fergana Valley, a densely populated industrial and agricultural zone in Uzbekistan. It remains the largest inland oil spill in history.
5. Nowruz Oil Field
Tons spilled: 260,000
On February 10, 1983, at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, an oil tanker collided with the Nowruz platform in the Persian Gulf. The slick caught fire when Iraqi planes attacked, and it took Iranian workers more than six months to cap the well. Eleven people died in the process.
6. ABT Summer
Tons spilled: 260,000
The Liberian supertanker ABT Summer exploded off the coast of Angola on May 28, 1991, killing five crew members. Millions of gallons of oil leaked into the Atlantic Ocean.
7. Castillo de Bellver
Tons spilled: 252,000
On August 6, 1983, a fire broke out aboard the Spanish tanker Castillo de Bellver, causing a massive explosion that spilled 78 million gallons of oil off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. A shift in winds pushed the oil offshore, minimizing the disaster’s environmental effects.
8. Amoco Cadiz
Tons spilled: 223,000
On March 16, 1978, the Amoco Cadiz supertanker wrecked off the coast of Portsall, France. Ultimately, 240 miles of France’s Brittany coast suffered oil damage, with millions of dead mollusks and sea urchins washing ashore. This was the first time images of oil-coated sea birds were seen by the world.
9. M/T Haven
Tons spilled: 144,000
The M/T Haven, a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC), suffered a huge explosion off the coast of Genoa, Italy, on April 11, 1991. Six crew members were killed, and the Mediterranean coasts of Italy and France remained polluted for the next 12 years.
10. Odyssey
Tons spilled: 132,000
In November 1988, the American-owned Odyssey drilling rig burst into flames and split in two off the coast of Novia Scotia. The accident killed one person and poured 43 million gallons of oil into the sea.
Russia’s government, keen to show it is not only targeting foreigners for environmental breaches, said yesterday it might strip up to 19 licences from domestic giant Lukoil.
Russia’s outspoken environmental watchdog Oleg Mitvol led the criticism of the nation’s top oil firm while on a trip to the Arctic north of the Komi republic in western Russia, where Lukoil is active.
After listening to villagers’ complaints about pollution, he prodded a frozen pond with a stick to reveal oily-looking water underneath. “In the rest of the world, companies work according to environmental regulations. But here in Russia for the past 15 years people have been doing whatever they wanted,” he said.
Markets were sceptical that Russian environmental authorities, who have waged a fierce campaign against Royal Dutch Shell’s giant Sakhalin-2 project, would actually remove licences from a Russian oil giant.
Lukoil’s shares were up almost 3 per cent at 2,085 roubles 61.71) by lunchtime yesterday, despite Mr Mitvol’s threats.
Oil and gas pipelines social and environment impact assessment from daydev
Mr Mitvol, who works under the Natural Resources Ministry, has also been vociferous in his attacks on foreign companies working on Sakhalin. “Everywhere I’ve been in Russia, I’ve never seen anything as bad as Sakhalin,” Mr Mitvol said.
But he added that foreign firms were more cooperative than Russian firms, which needed to put their house in order too.
In 1994, the republic of Komi, where Usinsk lies 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of the Arctic Circle, became the scene of Russia’s largest oil spill when an estimated 100,000 tons splashed from an aging pipeline.
It killed plants and animals, and polluted up to 40 kilometers (25 miles) of two local rivers, killing thousands of fish. In villages most affected, respiratory diseases rose by some 28 percent in the year following the leak.
Seen from a helicopter, the oil production area is dotted with pitch-black ponds. Fresh leaks are easy to find once you step into the tundra north of Usinsk. To spot a leak, find a dying tree. Fir trees with drooping gray, dry branches look as though scorched by a wildfire. They are growing insoil polluted by oil.
Usinsk spokeswoman Tatyana Khimichuk said the city administration had no powers to influence oil company operations.
“Everything that happens at the oil fields is Lukoil’s responsibility,” she said, referring to Russia’s second largest oil company, which owns a network of pipelines in the region.
Komi’s environmental protection officials also blamed oil companies. The local prosecutor’s office said in a report this year that the main problem is “that companies that extract hydrocarbons focus on making profits rather than how to use the resources rationally.”
Valery Bratenkov works as a foreman at oil fields outside Usinsk.
After hours, he is with a local environmental group. Bratenkov used to point out to his Lukoil bosses that oil spills routinely happen under their noses and asked them to repair the pipelines. “They were offended and said that costs too much money,” he said.
Activists like Bratenkov find it hard if not impossible to hold authorities to account in the area since some 90 percent of the local population comprises oil workers and their families who have moved from other regions of Russia, and depend on the industry for their livelihood.
Representatives of Lukoil denied claims that they try to conceal spills and leaks, and said that no more than 2.7 tons leaked last year from its production areas in Komi.
Ivan Blokov, campaign director at Greenpeace Russia, who studies oil spills, said the situation in Komi is replicated across Russia’s oil-producing regions, which stretch from the Black Sea in the southwest to the Chinese border in Russia’s Far East.
“It is happening everywhere,” Blokov said. “It’s typical of any oil field in Russia. The system is old and it is not being replaced in time by any oil company in the country.”
What also worries scientists and environmentalists is that oil spills are not confined to abandoned or aging fields. Alarmingly, accidents happen at brand new pipelines, said Barenboim.
Other oil sites in the Komi area, close to the town of Usinsk, include Total’s Kharyaga PSA, although it was not in Mr Mitvol’s sights yesterday.
The Natural Resources Ministry in Moscow said eight Lukoil deposits in Khanty-Mansiisk in western Siberia and 11 in Komi could lose licences due to alleged breaches of licensing terms.
“The inspections are a part of a state campaign to strengthen control over the oil and gas sector,” said Valery Nesterov, an energy analyst at Troika Dialog brokerage. But he downplayed the risk that Lukoil might be deprived of valuable licences. “The list of the companies which have been threatened with having their licence revoked is very long but no licences have actually been withdrawn so far,” he said.
Russia’s Population Meltdown
Declining birth rates and soaring rates of disease now threaten Russia’s very survival as a nation.
Last July, in his first annual presidential address to the Russian people, President Vladimir Putin listed the 16 Amost acute problems facing our country. Number one on the list, topping even the country’s dire economic condition and the diminishing effectiveness of its political institutions, was the declining size of Russia’s population. Putin put the matter plainly. The Russian population is shrinking by 750,000 every year, and (thanks to a large excess of deaths over births) looks likely to continue dropping for years to come. If the trend is not altered, he warned, the very survival of the nation will be endangered.
Unfortunately, even Putin’s grim reckoning of the numbers may understate the dimensions of the calamity confronting his country. Its birthrate has reached extraordinarily low levels, while the death rate is high and rising. The incidence of HIV/AIDS, syphilis, tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and other infectious diseases is soaring, even as the Russian health care system staggers. Perhaps 40 percent of the nation’s hospitals and clinics do not have hot water or sewage. Seventy-five percent or more of pregnant women suffer a serious pathology during their pregnancy, such as sepsis, toxemia, or anemia. Only about 25 percent of Russian children are born healthy. (The rate of infant mortality, however, has declined, at least according to official statistics.) The leading Russian pediatrician Aleksandr Baranov estimates that only five to 10 percent of all Russian children are healthy.
As if these challenges were not enough, Russia bears the burden of decades of environmentally destructive practices that have a direct, harmful impact on public health. Their legacy includes not just conventional pollution of the air and water but serious contamination around many nuclear and chemical sites throughout the country. In Dzerzhinsk and Chapayevsk, two of the 160 military chemical cities that produce chemicals for the military-industrial complex, the rate of spontaneous abortions or miscarriages is above 15 percent of conceptions a strong indication of chromosomal aberrations produced by the environment. Yet a weakened Russia lacks the means to contain ongoing pollution or to begin the monumental task of environmental cleanup. The decline in the size of the Russian population, and in Russians’ general health, vastly increases the difficulty of creating the economic health upon which such a cleanup and so much else depends.
It is not only compassion that should arouse the concern of the West. While some may cheer the weakening of this less-than-friendly power, still armed with large numbers of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, Russia’s sickening decline raises the twin prospects of political disintegration and subsequent consolidation under an authoritarian leader hostile to Western interests. The nation’s problems, in any event, can no longer be thought of as somehow only its own. Last year, an unclassified U.S. National Intelligence Estimate warned that the global rise of new and re-emergent infectious diseases will not only contribute to social and political instability in other countries but endanger U.S. citizens at home and abroad. Deaths from infectious diseases (including HIV/AIDS) in the United States have nearly doubled, to some 170,000 annually, since 1980. And Russia’s deteriorating weapons stockpiles pose a threat of unknown dimensions, particularly to the nearby Scandinavian countries.
The broad outlines of Russia’s looming catastrophe can be sketched in stark terms. Russians are dying at a significantly faster rate than they are being born. Gloomy as it was, President Putin’s speech was based on the relatively rosy projections of the Russian State Statistical Agency, or Goskomstat. This scenario assumes an increase in the total fertility rate beginning in 2006, a decline in the mortality rate, and an increase in net in-migration. But only the latter projection is remotely plausible. By 2050, I believe, Russia’s population will shrink by one-third. In other words, it will drop from roughly 145 million today to about 100 million, a blow that even a stable, prosperous country would have difficulty sustaining.
My projections, based on a model developed for West Germany by the Population Reference Bureau, are less apocalyptic than those of some other Russian officials, Duma members, and demographers. A new study produced under the auspices of the Institute of Social and Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, for example, predicts that population will decline to between 70 and 90 million by 2045. If one takes the annual 750,000 decrease noted by Putin and multiplies it by 50 years, the result is a drop in population of 37.5 million persons, to a net total of 108 million not far from my estimate of 100 million. The U.S. population, meanwhile, is projected by the U.S. Bureau of the Census to grow by 2050 from today’s 275 million to 396 million, a level almost four times the projected Russian population.
In broad demographic terms, one can say that Russia’s population is being squeezed by two pincers. On one side is the fertility rate, which has been falling since the early 1980s. Russian women now bear little more than half the number of children needed to sustain the population at current levels. In absolute terms, the number of annual births has dropped by half since reaching a high of 2.5 million in 1983. Due to Russia’s rising mortality rates, fertility would need to reach 2.15 births per woman just to reach the so-called simple population replacement level. As of 1999, however, the total fertility rate stood at 1.17 births per woman. That is to say, Russian women bear an average of 1.17 children over their entire fertile life, from ages 15 to 49. Fertility would need to rise by some two-thirds to reach the replacement level.
The Goskomstat projection points to an increase in fertility to 1.7 births per woman by 2006. But this prediction seems to be based on a simple extrapolation of existing trends that does not take into account the deterioration of Russians’ health. The harsh reality is that the number of women in the prime childbearing ages of 20 to 29 is falling, while the rates of sexually transmitted diseases among men and women (which affect fertility) and gynecological illnesses are both rising. The ranks of eligible parents, especially fathers, are being thinned by tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, alcoholism, drug abuse, and other causes. Fifteen to 20 percent of all Russian families experience infertility, with males accounting for 40 to 60 percent of the cases. Even as mortality and disease take more and more young people out of the pool of potential parents, attitudes toward childbearing have changed for the worse. An estimated two-thirds of all pregnancies now end in abortions. It is hard to see how the hoped-for fertility gains will occur. A steeper decline in Russia’s population seems unavoidable.
Mortality rates are also assumed to rise in the official calculation, but much less markedly than I anticipate. Some perspective on the Russian situation is provided by a comparison with the United States, which projects an average life expectancy at birth and survival rates for specific age groups that are far from the best in the world especially among 15- to 19-year-old males, who kill themselves with drugs, alcohol, and motorcycles. But in the United States, a boy who lives to age 16 has an 88 to 90 percent chance of living to age 60. His Russian counterpart has only a 58-60 percent chance. And those chances are shrinking.
Tuberculosis is only one of the maladies whose surging incidence is not reflected in current Goskomstat projections. The disease flourishes among people weakened by HIV/AIDS, alcoholism, and poverty. Findings by the research institute of the Russian Federal Security Service project enormous numbers of deaths from tuberculosis. Whereas only 7.7 of every 100 new Russian tuberculosis victims died in 1985, the death rate is now 25.5 per 100. According to official reports, the number of tuberculosis deaths soared by 30 percent in the 1998-99 period. The 1999 death toll of 29,000 was about 15 times the toll in the United States, or nearly 30 times greater when measured as deaths per 100,000 population in both countries.
The Russian authorities also underestimate the future impact of HIV/AIDS, spread chiefly by sexual contact and intravenous drug use. Vadim Pokrovskiy of the Federal Center for AIDS Prevention, Russia’s leading HIV/AIDS epidemiologist, estimates there will be five to 10 million deaths in the years after 2015 (deaths that, I believe, aren’t reflected in the projections). Most of the victims will be 15 to 29 years old, and most will be males further diminishing the pool of potential fathers.
Moscow reported 2.5 new cases of HIV nationally per 100,000 population in 1998, but the actual rate may be five, 20, or even 50 to 100 times greater, according to Russian epidemiologists and health officials. (The U.S. HIV incidence rate was 16.7 new cases per 100,000 population in 1998.) The Baltic port city of Kaliningrad and its surrounding oblast hold the unhappy distinction of recording the highest official rate of HIV increase, at 76.9 new cases per 100,000. Moscow, however, is currently overtaking it.
Some Russian demographers take comfort from the fact that their country is not entirely alone, since deaths exceed births in a number of European countries. But in countries such as Germany and Italy, the net ratio is close to 1.1 deaths to every birth. In Russia, deaths exceeded births by 929,600 in 1999, a ratio of 1.8:1 . If health trends and environmental conditions are not dramatically changed for the better, Russia could see two or more deaths for every birth in the not-too-distant future.
None of this is to say that there are not some signs of improvement. Childhood vaccination rates for tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, and other diseases have risen since 1995. Vaccination for rubella (German measles), which causes birth defects when contracted by pregnant women in the first trimester, was added to Russia’s prescribed immunization calendar in 1999. (However, no vaccines are produced in the country and none are yet imported; almost 600,000 cases were reported in 1999.) But the larger trends support the vision of looming demographic catastrophe. And a number of other developments also offer dark portents for the country’s future rates of fertility and mortality, and for the general health of its people, especially its children.
Sexually transmitted diseases have seen incredible rates of increase during the past decade. These diseases cripple and kill, damage reproductive health, and are associated with the spread of HIV/AIDS. The causes can be traced to the explosion of pornography and promiscuity; to the growth of prostitution, notably among 10- to 14-year-old girls; and, especially, to drug abuse involving shared needles and syringes. In 1997, the Ministry of Internal Affairs estimated that the market for illegal drugs was around $7 billion, 600 times greater than in 1991.
The Russian Ministry of Health reported 450,000 new cases of syphilis in 1997, and Goskomstat published a figure of close to 405,000. These are the last reasonably accurate statistics we are likely to have, thanks to a 1998 law that imposes prison terms on syphilitics who contract the disease through drug abuse.
Just as one would predict, the number of registered new cases of syphilis declined in 1998 and 1999. However, the explosion in new cases of HIV, and a concomitant increase in the estimated number of drug addicts, belie the latest figures on syphilis. The epidemiological synergy between HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (including gonorrhea, which is vastly under-reported) suggests not only that syphilis is more widespread than reported but that further increases in the incidence of HIV/AIDS can be expected.
The 1998 law that classified drug addicts as criminals ensured that few addicts a group at high risk for HIV will seek treatment. A specialist cited in Komsomol’skaya Pravda in 1998 made this grim prediction: We will see increased risk of complications and overdoses, the death rate among drug addicts will rise, incidence of HIV/AIDS will rise; and…the illegal market of drug-related services will begin to develop quite intensively.
Smoking is a habit among an estimated 70 percent of Russian males and one-third of females, and multinational tobacco companies aim to increase their sales in the country. The World Health Organization estimates that some 14 percent of all deaths in 1990 in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were traceable to smoking-related illnesses; it expects that number to rise to 22 percent by 2020.
Alcohol consumption reflects an epidemic of alcoholism. Russian vodka produced for the domestic market (usually in half-liter bottles) comes with a tear-off top rather than a replaceable cork or screw top because it’s assumed that the bottle, once opened, will not be returned to the refrigerator. An estimated 20 million Russians roughly one-seventh of the population are alcoholics. Russia’s annual death toll from alcohol poisoning alone may have risen to 35,000 in 2000, as compared with 300 in the United States in the late 1990s.
Hepatitis B has sharply increased in incidence, but the sole producer of vaccines for the disease told me in Moscow that only 1.3 million doses are produced annually to meet a total demand of 13 to 14 million doses. Perhaps even more alarming in the long run are increases in the incidence of hepatitis C, an illness that chiefly attacks the liver and requires a very costly treatment protocol. The disease is often fatal.
Micronutrients are in short supply, especially iodine. No iodized salt has been produced in Russia since 1991, and little or none has been imported. In young children, iodine deficiency causes mental retardation.
Avitaminosis is common. A longitudinal study by the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences finds shortages of folic acid as well as vitamins A, B complex, D, and E among 30 percent of the population.
Heart disease exacts a toll, in age-standardized death rates, more than twice that in the United States and Western Europe. The death rate from such disease per 100,000 population is currently 736.1 in Russia, 267.7 in Belgium, 317.2 in the United Kingdom, and 307.2 in the United States.
Cancer is becoming more common. New cases increased from 191.8 per 100,000 population in 1990 to 200.7 in 1998. The incidence is likely to rise as a consequence of long-term exposure to low doses of radiation from decades of nuclear testing, as well as to benzo(a)pyrene, dioxin, and other industrial carcinogens. As in so many other cases, official statistics understate the problem. There is significant under-reporting of breast cancer, for example, especially among women of Muslim origin, who are reluctant to seek treatment from male doctors.
To all the foregoing challenges to the Russian future we must add a daunting collection of environmental ills. Russia will have to cope with a legacy of industrial development undertaken virtually without heed of the consequences for human health and the environment, just as it will have to contend with the consequences of decades of testing and stockpiling of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
The crises that temporarily focus worldwide attention on these problems, such as the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, only begin to hint at their severity. The news media beamed shocking reports of the 1994 Usinsk oil spill around the world, but it was only one of 700 major accidents and spills (defined as those involving 25,000 barrels of oil or more) that occur every year in Russia, spreading phenols, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and a variety of other toxic chemicals. As Victor Ivanovich Danilov-Danilyan, the former head of the State Committee on Environment, notes, these losses are equivalent to about 25 Exxon Valdez spills per month!
Radioactivity remains a continuing concern. After the 1963 Test Ban Treaty barred open-air atomic weapons testing, the nuclear powers continued to conduct underground tests. But there was an important difference in the Soviet Union. There, many of the nation’s more than 100 nuclear explosions occurred in densely populated regions such as the Volga, as well as in the Urals and Yakutiya (Sakha) regions. After first denying that any of those explosions had been vented into the atmosphere, then Minister of Atomic Industry Viktor Mikhaylov later admitted that venting had occurred in 30 percent of the underground blasts.
What goes on today within the 10 formerly secret nuclear cities devoted to the development and production of nuclear weapons in Russia remains largely a mystery. Around the city of Chelyabinsk, a thousand miles east of Moscow in the Urals, some 450,000 Russians face unknown risks from a series of spills and accidents that occurred from the late 1940s to the 1960s. And area rivers may have been tainted by seepage from nuclear waste directly injected deep underground at the Krasnoyarsk, Dmitrovgrad, and Tomsk sites. Near the Tomsk-7 facility, the site of a serious nuclear accident in 1993, Russian and American environmentalists recently found evidence of phosphorous-32, a radionuclide with a half-life of only about two months. The discovery strongly suggests that radioactive wastewater used in cooling Tomsk-7’s two remaining plutonium-producing plants was illegally dumped.
Chemical pollution is widespread. Even in Moscow, which is home to much heavy industry, there is evidence that pollution has caused genetic deformities in the young [see photo, facing page]. In a study of the impact of chemical, petrochemical, and machine-building industries on human health, the Russian Ministry of Health found that newborns suffered congenital anomalies at a much higher rate (108 to 152 per 10,000 births) in industrial cities than in rural localities (39 to 54 per 10,000).
Alarming cases of mercury pollution, which causes illness and birth defects, have been reported (though aggregate official data have never been published). Three years ago, 16 tons of mercury was released upriver from the major northern city of Arkhangel’sk. In Krasnoural’sk, a city in the Urals that produces car batteries, Russian and American researchers have found that 76.5 percent of the children are mentally retarded. Lead is the cause. Cadmium and arsenic are prevalent in the air and land throughout much of Russia. In the Arctic north, wind-blown heavy metal salts and other pollutants from the city of Norilsk’s nonferrous metal plants have left the land barren and treeless for 75 kilometers to the southeast. Lakes and rivers everywhere are badly polluted by heavy metals dumped by industry and allowed to run off farmland. Estimates by the Yeltsin-era Ministry of Ecology and other observers suggest that only 25 to 50 percent of Russia’s fresh water is potable.
The world has not been blind to Russia’s plight. By late 1998, the United States and other donors had sent more than $66 billion in aid, according to a U.S. government estimate. The list of donors includes even South Korea, and recently officials of the European Union and the World Health Organization have recognized the need to act aggressively. But the aid has been inadequate and piecemeal, and its delivery has been hampered by corruption and inept administration. The frightening reality is that it may already be too late to help. Andrey Iliaronov, an economic adviser to President Putin, has pointed to 2003 as the year of reckoning, when the demographic crisis, the crumbling infrastructure, and the burden of massive foreign debt may combine to deal a crippling blow to Russia’s remaining productive capacity and thus, to its ability to help itself.
Where will the money come from for all the myriad improvements needed in reproductive and child health, for tuberculosis prevention and treatment, for HIV/AIDS cocktails of protease inhibitors? Who will supply the $400 billion needed to clean up the water supply over the next 20 years, or the $6 billion to clean up chemical weapons storage sites, or the hundreds of billions to clean up nuclear waste? The list of needs is depressingly long, and the Russian government has not always taken the right steps to address them. Last year, for example, President Putin abolished Russia’s main environmental agency, the State Committee on Environment, and transferred its responsibilities to the Ministry of Natural Resources, which is in the business of developing the country’s oil and mineral reserves. And yet, despite how daunting the task may seem, and how long the odds of success, we cannot simply ignore the ruin in Russia. The United States and other nations of the world have a profound interest in helping to avert an economic and demographic Chernobyl that would give a fearful new meaning to the word meltdown.
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In 1981 a UNEP fact-finding mission to East Africa identified large-scale erosion, oil pollution, damaged coral reefs, ruined mangrove swamps, pollution from fertilizers and threats to precious marine animals as the major environmental problems in the region.
The list of threats to the environment has changed little since then. A workshop in 1997 listed domestic sewage, solid domestic waste, habitat degradation, agrochemical pollution and industrial waste pollution. The region remains characterized by vulnerable economies, large populations with a high rate of population growth, and areas subject to environmental stress.
The important and heavily fished reef zone close to shore is particularly vulnerable to pollution and silting. Oil is a major pollution threat to coastal ecosystems, owing to the heavy use of the tanker route along the East African coast. On any given day there are hundreds of tankers in the Region, many of them Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs). Slicks are brought in from spills in the open ocean by coastal currents, while operational discharges from ships and refineries add to the load.
In recent decades, the growth of industry has brought an increasing volume of effluents to coastal waters. The use of agricultural chemicals has continued to grow, and sewage treatment continues to be inadequate in many parts of the region.
Some species of marine animals are already endangered as a result of human activities, particularly the dugong or manatee, which is often caught in fishing nets and drowned. Marine turtles continue to decrease in numbers as their eggs are poached and the adults are killed for their meat and decorative shells.
Eastern Africa is also undergoing an extraordinary rate of urbanization. As the cities have become overcrowded, water supplies have proven insufficient, and systems for drainage, sewerage and refuse disposal inadequate. Domestic sewage is discharged directly into rivers and in some cases the sea.
Although industrialization remains slow relative to other parts of the world, it takes place without proper environmental impact assessments legislative controls, leading to further pressure on the environment. Rivers, creeks and the sea have become dumping sites for industrial wastes. Industries of major environmental concern in the region include textiles, tanneries, paper and pulp mills, breweries, chemical factories, cement factories, sugar factories, fertilizer factories, and oil refineries. In some countries, slaughter houses near the sea are a serious source of marine pollution.
Desertification
Long drawn out droughts, over-grazing and poor agricultural practices, deforestation and reclamation of wetlands for agriculture are all combining to bring about desertification in the coastal areas of East Africa.
The continued high population growth rate is placing pressure on land beyond its carrying capacity, and driving out the traditional nomadic practices which allowed for environmental recovery. Livestock development is seldom accompanied by proper pasture management, leading to desert conditions in areas of concentration.
When these destructive pressures occur in semi-arid areas with shallow soils, desertification and desert encroachment can becomes irreversible. The semi-arid parts of Eastern Africa are particularly vulnerable.
Coastal degradation and erosion
Human encroachment and activities such as animal husbandry and agriculture are rapidly degrading the coastal environment of Eastern Africa, resulting in deforestation, destruction of mangroves and disappearance of other vegetation; a decline in soil fertility, and the death of wildlife. Marine resources are directly threatened by these activities.
Mangroves were once common in sheltered bays and estuaries, providing shelter to many important fish species and prawns. They are now threatened by intensive cropping to provide firewood, poles, tannin, medicinal products, paper pulp and timber, and to open up new space for aquaculture and salt production. Mangrove swamps are also threatened by fluctuations in the amount of fresh water and sediment reaching them caused by upstream hydraulic works, and indirectly by destruction of protective reefs.poles, firewood and by large-scale clearing for salt production.
Coral reefs have been damaged by excessive siltation resulting from poor agricultural practices, deforestation along riverbanks, and the dredging and and dumping associated with harbour development. Many were damaged by fishing with dynamite and poison, especially before these methods were outlawed in part of the region. Tourists collect coral as souvenirs. More recently the bleaching of corals has become a severe problem.
The shoreline in most of the region is receding as a result of coastal erosion: the shoreline retreat over parts of Tanzania has been estimated at between three and five metres per day. Barrier islands are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels.
Climate change
A task team report on the implications of climate change for the Eastern African region (see UNEP: Potential impacts of expected climate change on coastal and near-shore environment. UNEP Regional Seas Reports and Studies No.140 (UNEP, 1992.) concluded that the region’s low-lying coastal areas and marine ecosystems, water resources, terrestrial ecosystems and human settlements and coastal infrastructure are at risk as a consequence of climate change impacts.
The economies of the region are dominated by agriculture. Fishing is an important source of food and contributes to the economy of the majority of the countries. Tourism is an important activity.
The effects of climate change will be felt everywhere, perhaps most obviously in altered patterns of rainfall, coastal weathering, atmospheric pressure and evaporation. The spatial and temporal distribution of storms and cyclones will change their paths and frequency, and could well increase in intensity: Some scientists believe the terrible floods of early 2000 in Mozambique are but a taste of worse to come.
Besides the direct toll on human lives, there will be impacts on coastal habitats such as coral reefs, lagoons, and mangroves. The reefs will be vulnerable to wave action and sea-level rise as well as sedimentation. Their destruction will lead to a decline in natural coastal defences and further encourage coastal erosion.
The quality and quantity of water available from rainfall, rivers and ground water will be affected by changes in the distribution and amount of rainfall, evapo-transpiration, surface runoff, river discharge, recharge, and aquifer volumes. Drier and hotter conditions would place an inordinate pressure on water resources.
Ecosystem effects could include latitudinal and altitudinal shifts in plant and animal species as well as, loss of biodiversity due to water scarcity and arid soil conditions. While agriculture might benefit somewhat from a global increase in CO2, moisture deficits would lower crop yields and require additional irrigation. Sea-level rise would increase the intrusion of saline water up river mouths and also decrease the area available for cultivation on low-lying coastal areas and river estuaries.
Fisheries would be affected by changes to the breeding and migratory habits of most fish, hence, year to year variability of stocks could increase leading to a planning and management problems. Socio-economic activities, and infrastructure such as port facilities, waste disposal, roads, are already under stress. Climate change would create additional stress, hence reducing economic performance and growth.
The human factor
A critical problem in the region is the rapid rate of human population growth in some countries. Infrastructure has a hard time keeping up, with resulting strain on educational facilities as well as resources.
Much of the population resides in the coastal areas, employed by the light industry located along the coast and others in the tourist industry. Most of the region’s economies rely on agriculture and tourism which together contribute close to 50% of the gross domestic product. Tourism specifically is a main earner of foreign exchange in the coastal parts of most of the countries in the region.
The population is unevenly distributed over the region. Northern Mozambique and Merca northwards of Somalia are almost uninhabited due to extreme climate conditions.
Both mainland and island populations are concentrated on the coasts, where population growth is higher than average for the region as a whole, largely owing to migration, urbanization and favourable employment opportunities. The majority of these populations are employed by the light industry located along the coast and others in the tourist industry. Most of the economies rely on agriculture and tourism which together contribute close to 50% of the gross domestic product. Tourism specifically is a main earner of foreign exchange in the coastal parts of most of the countries in the region.
The extremely rapid rate of population growth in some of the countries in the region is a critical factor, and the resulting pressure on social amenities, notably in the coastal cities, has become very high. The infrastructure is unable to keep pace with the population growth rate; educational facilities are no longer adequate and the resource base to support the required expansion programme meagre. There is great disparity in per capita income in the countries of the region for a variety of political and environmental reasons.
Oil gushing from an undersea well in the Gulf of Mexico has damaged BP’s reputation and share price but accidents involving other companies in less scrutinized parts of the world have avoided the media glare. Investors have knocked around $30 billion off BP’s value since an explosion at a drilling rig killed 11 people and began an oil spill the London-based major is struggling to plug nearly a month after the accident happened.
The U.S. media and political machine has turned its full force on BP and U.S. President Barack Obama has set up a commission into the leak which is sending an estimated 5,000 barrels per day (bpd) into Gulf of Mexico waters.
In contrast, the international media has largely ignored the latest incidents of pipeline damage in Nigeria, where the public can only guess how much oil might have been leaked. The most recent damage in Nigeria, which has not been attributed to militant attacks that have preyed on Nigerian oil infrastructure for years, forced U.S. operator ExxonMobil to relieve itself from contractual obligations by declaring force majeure on its exports of Nigerian benchmark crude.
The light sweet crude is particularly well-suited for refining into gasoline and is regularly supplied to the United States, the world’s biggest oil burner. Exxon declined the opportunity to give details of the damage, clean-up or repair work.
An industry source, who declined to be named, said 100,000 bpd of oil had leaked for a week from a pipeline that has since been mended.
“If this (the BP spill) were in the Niger Delta, no one would be batting an eyelid,” said Holly Pattenden, African oil analyst at consultants Business Monitor International. “They have these kinds of oil spills in Nigeria all the time.”
Share Price Impact
BP’s share price has fallen around 18 percent since news of the fire at the drilling station on April 20, while Exxon shares were largely unchanged after the force majeure announcement. The largest operator in Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell has clashed with the Nigerian government for decades following numerous spills in Africa’s largest energy producer.
Shell said in a statement on its website that its Nigerian joint venture cleans up oil spills as quickly as possible, no matter what their cause, but is sometimes delayed by security concerns or because some communities deny access.
The Anglo-Dutch major said the volume of oil spills in Nigeria for its joint venture was almost 14,000 tonnes last year, the equivilant of around 280 bpd, mainly because of militant attacks on facilities.
“It (the U.S.) is without doubt the worse place for BP to lose their political capital,” said James Marriott, oil and gas analyst at environmental organisation Platform.
“If the U.S. administration gets aggressive against BP, then it’s a problem for them offshore, onshore in terms of shale gas, for conventional gas, refining, some cross-border projects with Canada and further afield.” [read more…]
Nigeria’s Ogoniland region could take 30 years to recover fully from the damage caused by years of oil spills, a long-awaited UN report says.
The study says complete restoration could entail the world’s “most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up”.
Communities faced a severe health risk, with some families drinking water with high levels of carcinogens, it said.
Oil giant Shell has accepted liability for two spills and said all oil spills were bad for Nigeria and the company.
“We will continue working with our partners in Nigeria, including the government, to solve these problems and on the next steps to help clean up Ogoniland,” Mutiu Sunmonu, managing director of the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), said in a statement.
The Bodo fishing community has said it will seek hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.
Nigeria is one of the world’s major oil producers.
‘900 times recommended levels’
The UN assessment of Ogoniland, which lies in the Niger Delta, said 50 years of oil operations in the region had “penetrated further and deeper than many had supposed”.
During a visit to a village in Ogoniland in 2007, I went to a small stream that gave people water for all their daily needs. The effects of oil spillage were clear. On the surface of the water there was a thin film of oil. Villages moved it with their hands before scooping water.
Villagers told me no fish had been seen in the stream for more than five years. They told me people had been killed by oil pipes exploding and others had developed health problems after inhaling fumes from burning oil well heads.
When I visited the village again in 2011, oil spillage had worsened. Villagers no longer drank water from the stream. They walked for up to four hours to get water.
Over the past two decades, successive Nigerian governments have failed the people of Ogoniland. I doubt this report will change anything. In the meantime, the voices of secession in Ogoniland will grow louder.
“In at least 10 Ogoni communities where drinking water is contaminated with high levels of hydrocarbons, public health is seriously threatened,” the UN Environmental Programme (Unep) said in a statement.
Some areas which appeared unaffected were actually “severely contaminated” underground, Unep said.
In one community, the report says, families were drinking from wells which were contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogen, at 900 times recommended levels.
It said scientists at the site, which lay close to a Nigerian National Petroleum Company pipeline, found oil slicks eight centimetres thick floating on the water.
This was reportedly due to an oil spill more than six years ago, it said.
The report, based on examinations of some 200 locations over 14 months, said Shell had created public health and safety issues by failing to apply its own procedures in the control and maintenance of oilfield infrastructure.
But it also said local people were sabotaging pipelines in order to steal oil.
The report says that restoring the region could cost $1bn (£613m) and take 25-30 years to complete.[read more]
An equally powerful question: Will the political impact be just as significant?
Clues to this may lie in the Ecuadorean Amazon, whose lands and politics have been transformed by devastating oil pollution wrought by Texaco and the country’s own national oil company, Petroecuador.
Twenty years ago, near the beginning of that transformation, I sat beside a campesino-turned-community activist, Segundo Jaramillo, as our small plane banked low over the company oil town of Lago Agrio.
Below lay the grimy hub of Texaco’s former operation in Ecuador, with its maze of pipelines, pumping stations, and Wild West bars. Mr. Jaramillo gripped his armrests and looked out the window nervously; it was his first flight.
Heartsick and angered by the oil-smeared landscape that surrounded his home and threatened his family’s health, he had come to Quito by an arduous bus ride through the Andes.
In the capital, he met with Texaco critics and antipetroleum activists, who introduced us. Now we were returning to the Amazon so he could show me his homeland.
In the coming days with Jaramillo and local indigenous leaders along the Napo and Aguarico rivers, I began to understand the extent of the damage.
Huge open pools of oil and toxic sludge were scattered throughout the rain forest, dumped unceremoniously by indifferent oil workers. Contaminated water supplies had Jaramillo’s neighbors complaining of skin diseases, nonstop headaches, and internal organ pain.
In the Cofan Indian village of Dureno, the Aguarico – “River of Rich Waters” – was so polluted that villagers could no longer bathe in it.
A young leader called Toribe told me the population of Cofanes in the area, once 70,000, had shrunk to 3,000 since the day “a large and noisy bird” – actually a Texaco helicopter – appeared in the early 1970s, scoping the then-pristine forest for places to drill. “Many fled from here,” the young indigenous activist told me. “The whole structure of our lives has changed.”
In all, according to the book “Amazon Crude Oil,” edited by the environmental lawyer Judith Kimerling, Texaco dumped 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the Amazon, while nearly 17 million gallons of crude – many more than in the Exxon-Valdez disaster – spilled from the main Amazon-Andes pipeline, which feeds tankers bound for the United States. The impact on public health is impossible to quantify, but one study, citing benzene contamination leaking from unlined pits, links oil production to 1,401 cancer deaths in the Ecuadorean Amazon.
The human toll of Ecuador’s toxic oil legacy helped remake the country’s politics.
Alliances among the nation’s indigenous groups, Ecuadorean social justice organizations, and the international environmental movement led to support for emerging leaders who sought to distance themselves from the country’s colonial past.
Ecuador, long the quintessential banana republic whose policies benefitted the US and a corrupt local elite, is now governed by a left-leaning president, Rafael Correa, who declared upon entering office that “many of the oil contracts are a true entrapment for the country.” (Many of the groups that helped bring Mr. Correa to power are now disillusioned with him.) One of Correa’s favorite targets is Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001 and which is now defending itself against a $27.3 billion class action lawsuit in a Lago Agrio courtroom.[read more]
[2011]A recent oil spill in China’s Bohai Sea has raised concerns about the lasting impacts the incident may have to China’s local fishing industry and the surrounding marine environment. The spill began in early June after a reported failure of the central control system on a main oil platform in the Penglai 19-3 oil field.
In an apparent cover up a press release was not announced by joint owners American based Conoco Phillips and China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) until late June and the spill did not make headline news until early July.
CNOOC announced on July 3rd that the leak of crude oil was under control and that the clean up of the effected 1 square kilometer of ocean was almost complete. China’s State Oceanic Administration (SOA) however reported in mid July that although a clean up was underway the leak was still not entirely under control and that the crude oil directly affected 158 square kilometers of ocean with water quality downgraded in upwards of 3,400 square kilometers of ocean.
Effects of the spill are already being seen in north China’s Hebei province where scallop farmers are reporting unprecedented mortalities of upwards of 70% of their seedlings. Farmers are detecting oil particles in the affected scallops as well as along their local beaches. The economic loss has thus far been estimated at 350 million Yuan or 54 million USD. Some of the scallop fishermen are organizing a lawsuit against CNOOC and Conoco Phillips for the damages they have already incurred from the effects of the oil spill.
The scallop fishery may be the first of many to be adversely affected by this unfortunate event and only time will tell the lasting impacts to the Bohai Sea ecosystem.
Chemical Pollution
Plants and animals produce countless chemical substances as part of their life processes. For the purposes of the Ocean Health Index, ‘chemical’ refers to a compound or substance that has been purified or manufactured by human sources.
More than 100,000 chemicals are used commercially (Daly 2006), and many enter the marine environment via atmospheric transport, runoff into waterways, or direct disposal into the ocean.
Three general categories of chemicals are of particular concern in the marine environment: oil, toxic metals, and persistent organic pollutants.
The total amount of oil entering the ocean has been estimated, but global data on the size and geographic distribution of oil spills are not available, so oil pollution could not be included as a separate category within the Ocean Health Index. However, oil would be among the substances contained in runoff from impervious surfaces and released by shipping and ports.
‘Oil’ is the general term for any thick, viscous, typically flammable liquid that is insoluble in water but soluble in organic solvents. Plants and animals produce a variety of natural oils, but the Clean Waters goal is primarily concerned with oil derived from geological deposits of petroleum (crude oil) for use as a fuel or lubricant.
Natural oil makes up 47% of the oil in the ocean. About 600,000 metric tonnes of oil enters the ocean naturally each year by seepage through many cracks in the seafloor (NRC 2003), but input from each is typically slow (Wells 1995) and natural seepage is not considered to be pollution.
The other half of the oil comes from anthropogenic sources, including boats, land-based runoff and, to a lesser degree, oil spills. These sources pose a greater threat to marine environments as the oil enters the ocean in concentrated areas at a high rate of flow.
The largest sources of human oil pollution are urban-based runoff and operational discharge of fuel from boating traffic and port operations. Discharge associated with boats constitutes 24% of the total amount of oil in the ocean (UNEP/GPA 2006).
Only 8% of overall oil ocean pollution is a result of spills during transportation or production. However, the toxicity levels of these spills tend to persist over time and have been linked to highly visible local and regional disasters.
After 20 years, oil pollution from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill persists and, in some areas, is nearly as toxic as initial levels (Exxon Valdez Trustee Council 2009; Raloff 2009).
Nicholas Forte has spent the last year with an array of health issues. Headaches. Migraines. Nausea. Breathing problems so severe they would land him in the hospital.
“We have no idea what it is,” the 22-year-old Battle Creek resident told Michigan Messenger. “Then it escalated to seizures.”
And while the seizures landed him in the hospital — at one point stopping his heart and his breathing — doctors are at a loss to understand why. Tests indicate none of the expected patterns for epilepsy.
Finding out why the formerly healthy young man had suddenly fallen ill drove him and his family to listen to Riki Ott, an environmental toxicologist who has been tracking the health impacts of oil spills on human beings since her home was impacted by the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. Ott was in Battle Creek Wednesday night at the invitation of local activists.
And when Forte asked Ott about his symptoms, she nodded an affirmative.
“We see that in 16-year olds in the Gulf,” she said. And Forte was not the only person she may have given much needed answers to. Nearly 50 people gathered to talk about headaches, nausea, burning eyes, memory loss and rashes. There were young and old, African-Americans and whites, rural residents and city dwellers, all with one thing in common — they live by the Kalamazoo River and were exposed to last year’s Enbridge Energy Partners Lakehead Pipeline 6B.
For Ott, it was a litany list of symptoms and voices of frustration she has heard from Alaska to South Korea to the Gulf Coast and now in Calhoun county. And Calhoun, she says, represents exposures to both tar sands and lighter oils, each with its own chemical make ups and attendant toxins.
“You’ve got the worst of two worlds. You’re getting a fully double whammy,” she says of the Cold Lake Crude Oil. “Peoples’ health problems (from the Enbridge spill) are identical to the Gulf.”
Ott says that studies about health impacts conducted by health officials since last summer are based on 40-year old science.
“We used to be able to use a thermometer and say, ‘yep, you’ve got a fever,’ but we didn’t have an understanding of how that worked on a cellular level,” she said. “Now, we have the tools and the ability to see how these chemicals impact us on a cellular level.”
Ott noted that just this July a peer-reviewed study of oil spill exposure found the same set of symptoms in each location. They are the identical to the ones being seen in Calhoun county. She also noted that the studies have begun to identify toxicity to DNA, as well as reproductive health impacts. She says many of the chemicals of concern to occupational and environmental health officials have been shown to impact fetuses in the first trimester.
Studies by the MDCH released this summer have indicated no risk of long term health effects. The National Wildlife Federation condemned the Aug. 17 report, calling it incomplete.
“By their own admission, multiple chemicals have not been fully tested. No doctor would look at a sick patient, skip doing a full diagnosis, and declare him fit as a fiddle. Officials are prematurely drawing conclusions about the risks of tar sands oil to human health.” said Beth Wallace with the Great Lakes Regional Center of the National Wildlife Federation. “Residents at the meeting, including myself, were extremely skeptical and frustrated when hearing these conclusions from officials with MDCH. A complete study on the make-up of tar sands oil needs to be conducted before we can begin to truly understand the impacts to humans, wildlife and our environment.”
Ott had not had a chance to fully read the report before an interview with Michigan Messenger or the public meeting, but said this determination and realization that specific chemicals of concern have been excluded from a review is not uncommon. Nor is it uncommon for people to be diagnosed with colds and boils, month after month.
The reason, she says, is twofold. First, the doctors are unlikely to be fully versed on the issue of what she calls chemical illnesses. Second, she says, even if they are aware, most insurance companies have no billing code for the diagnosis. This means that if a doctor issues a diagnosis of chemical illness, it is unlikely an insurance company will pay the doctor for the care and time put into making that clinical diagnosis.
Part of the issue, Ott says, is that the science of exposure concerns and health issues is based on research conducted in the 1970s on volatile organic chemicals or VOCs. Those are the chemicals that easily evaporate into the air and can be smelled at long distances. They include things like benzene. But science has science developed a body of literature exploring the impacts of chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. She says that while both chemicals may have persisted at significantly lower levels than considered unsafe, they accumulate in the body over the course of continued exposure. [read more]
Rights group Amnesty International has termed investigations by corporate giant Shell into oil spills in Nigeria a “fiasco”, alleging that the company repeatedly blamed sabotage in an effort to avoid responsibility.
“No matter what evidence is presented to Shell about oil spills, they constantly hide behind the ‘sabotage’ excuse and dodge their responsibility for massive pollution that is due to their failure to properly maintain their infrastructure,” Audrey Gaughran, director of global issues at Amnesty, said in a recent statement.
She said that “the investigation process into oil spills in the Niger Delta is a fiasco,” referring to the oil-producing region that is home to Africa’s largest crude industry.
In 2008, a spill caused by a fault in a Shell pipeline caused tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil to spill out into the Nigerian delta.
Four years on, the oil still floats on the waters of Bodo Creek. Local rights and environmental groups say that it is killing and contaminating plants and wildlife in one of Africa’s most bio-diverse regions.
The case, filed by 11,000 Bodo residents against the Anglo-Dutch oil giant, is currently being heard in a London court.
Shell has admitted liability in the 2008 disaster in Bodo, although there remain significant disagreements over the amount of oil that poured into the creeks.
CRIME DOES NOT PAY... PLUS, THE BUTLER DID IT! AND REMEMBER: WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU, WILL -MOST LIKELY- TRY AGAIN... AND DON'T FORGET: TODAY IS A GOOD DAY FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO DIE.
1rex22
Insomniacs II 