|
Каспинфо ноябрь 1999 |
|
Название: Нефть и газ в мире (на английском языке). Главные Пункты: * Материал Rainforest Action Network (RAN) о последствиях, которые влечет за собой дальнейшая разведка и разработка нефтегазовых ресурсов; также представлена информация о деятельности сети RAN в области охраны экваториальных лесов. (15.11.1999) Полный Текст Нефть и газ в мире (на английском языке). Rainforest Action International (RAN) Russia: Black Ice, Crimson Glow Introduction The quest for oil has defined the twentieth century. Many still view oil as black gold, a resource to be exploited as economically and expediently as possible. But those who seek to emulate the reserves of Rockefeller or the size of Shell with the power of petroleum are running out of time. Oil's day is over. Over 800 billion barrels of oil have been burned since the search for oil began in 1859. What has happened to those 800 billion barrels, what it has cost to get those 800 billion barrels, and why we cannot afford to burn 800 billion more, is the subject of this report. It's not that we're running out of oil - it's that we cannot afford to burn what we already have. This business cannot continue as usual. As this report reveals, the oil industry currently spends $156 billion annually seeking new reserves of oil and gas. Meanwhile, the world's top climate scientists agree that to burn this new petroleum ensures devastating climate change. If we burn more than approximately a quarter of existing reserves, we risk suffering the worst impacts of climate change. Why then, is the industry still looking for more? Climate change is the ecological limit to the oil industry. Although improvements in drilling technology promise at least a hundred more years of conventional oil and gas, the Earth simply cannot afford to burn all those fossil fuels. As reserves begin to dwindle, Big Oil casts its net wide across the planet. Both the number of countries and companies involved in new exploration activities has tripled in recent years. This global expansion of petroleum exploration not only threatens to irrevocably commit us all to the worst impacts of climate change, it is endangering fragile ecosystems and threatened indigenous peoples worldwide. Since 1988, the petroleum industry has: drilled 113,466 new exploration wells, out of a total number wells of more than a half a million; been awarded 4,040 contracts for new exploration-these awards have covered an area equalling both the US and Europe together; and cut 15 million kilometers of new seismic lines-or more than twice the distance of the entire US road network. These activities threaten: frontier forests in 22 countries coral reefs in 38 countries mangroves in 46 countries indigenous peoples on 6 continents, and global climatic stability worldwide. The U'wa of Colombia, the Karen of Burma, the Nahua of Peru-all of these indigenous peoples and dozens more are threatened by the global expansion of the oil industry. Are a few months of oil worth the irrevocable destruction of traditional peoples ways of life and dwindling intact ecosystems? These choices-between short-term profits and the rights of peoples and survival of ecosystems-are being made daily by the oil industry. The price of our global addiction to oil has simply become too high. Once gone-indigenous peoples, pristine ecosystems, our climate that makes life possible-they're gone forever. Hundreds of billions of dollars each year are being spent on an energy policy that is based on profits and pollution, rather than people and preservation. Finally, the pursuit of this black gold has locked country after country in a downward spiral of debt and dependency. Any solution to this problem must include some form of debt forgiveness to Southern countries, preferably in the form of a recognition of the ecological debt owed by the North to the South. This report is the most complete documentation to date of the extent of new exploration activities by the oil and gas industry and the places and peoples that are threatened by those activities. It is, however, only a first attempt to quantify both the scale of the threat, and the people and places that are threatened. More documentation is urgently required. It focuses on the activity of the industry in the last ten years, because it was ten years ago that nations of the world first undertook a commitment to combat climate change-which must include restrictions on the primary cause of climate change-the petroleum industry. The maps that accompany this report accurately represent an industry that is literally drilling to the ends of the Earth. Frighteningly, in the ten years that the world has been committed to global action to combat climate change, the petroleum industry continues to make it worse. The only way to stop climate change, preserve critical ecosystems, and defend the rights of the world's indigenous peoples, is to phase out the global use of fossil fuels. The first step towards phase out is to stop looking for more. New exploration for petroleum, a global industry that involves more than 6,000 companies, must end. While this may seem like a daunting goal, it is achievable. The good news is that current reserves of oil and gas can sustain us through the inevitable transition to renewable energy sources. The global economy will not come to a grinding halt. If we stop new exploration for oil and gas today, we protect indigenous peoples and ecosystems, we minimize the impact on our climate, and we will have at least 47 years to complete the transition to clean energy that all acknowledge must soon take place. Freeing up several hundred billion annually in investment capital could also do wonders for the renewable energy industry. An immediate ban on new exploration in pristine, frontier ecosystems was called for by over 200 organizations from 52 countries at the Kyoto meeting of the Climate Convention last year. This is a reasonable demand. Currently, the petroleum industry is mostly looking for oil in all its old places-using new technology to get more out of old reserves. Closing off the last threatened places, and respecting the rights of indigenous groups to say no if they so choose, are reasonable and necessary first steps to take in halting new exploration. "To prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system" is the goal of the Climate Convention. While diplomats debate lobbyists over calculations of carbon emissions, the petroleum industry is spending billions circumventing the spirit and intent, if not the letter, of that gathering. Success for that Convention, and for all of us, will ultimately be measured not in calculations of gigatons of carbon, but in wells not drilled, and acres and peoples saved. BLACK ICE AND CRIMSON GLOW: Siberia and the Russian Far East "It is painful to see how the few improvements in the lives of northern peoples...are more than canceled out by the damages from the organizations developing these regions. Over many years, day and night, the gas-burning flames around Nizhnyevartovsk have been lighting everything in a crimson glow, oil has been floating on the tributaries of the Ob, the forest has been cut down on the shores of the Taz and the Iceland moss in the reindeer pastures of Yamal have been perishing under the tracks of cross-country vehicles and through burning." - Aleksandr Pika and Boris Prokhorov The Former Soviet Union has a long history of oil and gas exploitation. Much of the operations have taken place in northwestern Siberia, which produces 78 percent of Russia's oil and 84 percent of its natural gas. The same area is populated by seven indigenous nations for whom oil and gas activities have led to serious environmental, social, and health problems. In Khant-Mansy Autonomous District of Western Siberia, as many as 1,000 oil spills occur every year, according to the Regional Ecological Committee. Many indigenous families have lost their access to adequate pastures for reindeer herding, a cornerstone of their economic and cultural well-being. Oil companies' response has been token at best. For example, in return for leasing its land to the U.S. oil company Amoco (just recently purchased by British Petroleum), one family received a walkie-talkie, a generator, 8 sacks of flour, sugar, tea, and 8 round batteries. Writing about oil development's impacts on the Eastern Khanty peoples, Andrew Wiget and Olga Balalaeva noted that: "By the early 1980s Samotlor, the name of the region's first major area of petroleum development near Nizhnevartovsk, had already become a mark of shame. Today throughout the area, oil spills and casual pollution blacken the wetlands, raised roads trap water causing flooding and ruining the forests, fires caused by oil worker carelessness and petroleum-soaked debris send columns of smoke into the air, and acid rain blights huge territories. Western Siberia, like the America's Appalachian coal fields at the beginning of this century, has become a national sacrifice area." According to Ecojuris, a public interest environmental law firm in Moscow, additional proposed development in Western Siberia's Khant-Mansy territory does not comply with Russian environmental law and threatens pristine forests and rich wildlife. Large-scale exploration and development is also under way on the continental shelf of Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Okhotsk. Sakhalin's oil and gas operators includes such companies as Royal Dutch/Shell, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Marathon, and Exxon, and is financially backed by bilateral and multilateral agencies as European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and Export-Import Bank of Japan. The Russian federal government sees "black gold" as its major resource to be developed for hard currency. These new projects threaten critical northern ecosystems. For example, offshore development in Russia's Far East threatens more than half of the world's remaining wild Pacific salmon. The Sea of Okhotsk is vital habitat for pollock and Kamchatka crab, which alone provide up to 20 percent of Russia's fish catch. Native communities including the Koryak and Itel'men people depend on fish from this region. The Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea also provide important habitat for grey whales, endangered stellar's sea lions and a large diversity of seabirds. Climactic conditions in the Sea of Okhotsk are severe. Ice sheers and high seas make oil development a risky venture, even with state of the art technology. Yet despite clear opposition from fishermen, environmental groups, and scientists, plans for oil exploration are moving forward. Environmental groups also worry about adequate oil spill response and mitigation plans and capabilities in case of a large spill. A recent map that compares the size of the Exxon Valdez spill to Sakhalin Island shows that such a spill could reach all the way to the shores of Hokkaido, thus impacting Japan's rich northern fisheries. The citizens of Russia have had little opportunity to express their concerns about Sakhalin oil development. Local environmental groups in Sakhalin that advocate for stronger environmental protection are harassed by the local government and attacked in the local press. Articles about the environmental impacts of Sakhalin development have been censored from Sakhalin's leading paper, which is financially supported in part by oil companies. While upgrading current petroleum operations to top environmental standards is a crucial step towards better protection of this expansive frontier, there is little evidence that the level of environmental safeguards offered by "best practices" is sufficient to warrant moving ahead with new projects. Local environmental groups including Kamchatka League of Independent Experts, Magadan Center for the Environment, the Fund for Protection of Salmon, the "Northern Pacific" Journal, and Sakhalin Environment Watch have banded together to oppose further oil exploration in the Sea of Okhotsk and in the Bering and Chukotka Seas. They point out that there is no reason to destroy Russia's vital fisheries economy, which supports many local communities, for oil that will only benefit large oil companies while threatening the seas with an environmental catastrophe. They are calling for a moratorium on oil and gas exploration in the Sea of Okhotsk, a call that was echoed in the resolution from a recent international conference on protection of biodiversity in the Russian Far East. - David Gordon, Pacific Environment and Resources Center What is Rainforest Action International? Rainforest Action Network (RAN) works to protect the Earth's rainforests and support the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots organizing and non-violent direct action. In pursuit of its mission to protect rainforests and the life they support, RAN has targeted and won significant concessions from such corporate giants as Arco, Coca-Cola Foods, MacMillan Bloedel, Conoco, Mitsubishi, Scott Paper, and Sony. In its first campaign, RAN educated the public about the loss of Central American rainforests to cattle ranches and led a successful consumer boycott of Burger King for buying rainforest beef. Nearly sixteen years later, after a string of successes, RAN's stature with the public, indigenous communities, and corporations is at an all time high. RAN accomplishes what it does because of its ability to mobilize 30,000 members and 150 grassroots Rainforest Action Groups (RAGS), to build alliances with human rights and environmental activist organizations worldwide, and to attract media attention. RAN's campaigners are proven leaders and innovators in the strategies and tactics of corporate campaigning. The following example of stopping oil drilling is among the organization's successes: ECUADOR DECLARES TWO SENSITIVE RAINFOREST PARKS OFF LIMITS TO OIL DRILLING RAINFOREST ACTION NETWORK For Immediate Release: February 1, 1999 Contacts: Mark Westlund: ranmedia@ran.org Shannon Wright: amazonia@ran.org Telephone: 415/398-4404 "By protecting the rainforests of the Cuyabeno-Imuya and Yasuni national parks, Ecuador is investing in its long-term economic and social well-being. Rather than sacrificing the forests to make short-term profit for a few muiltinational oil companies, these rich ecosystems will continue to provide for Ecuador as a whole and the local indigenous peoples in perpetuity. This is important move will need to be followed by the protection of all threatened Amazonian lands and increased investments in the country's many renewable energy options." -- Shannon Wright, Clean Energy Campaign Director Rainforest activists in Ecuador and the United States shared a taste of victory today after Ecuador's president Jamil Mahuad issued a decree blocking planned and future oil exploration, mining, logging and colonization in the Cuyabeno-Imuya and Yasuni national parks. Together, the parks total 2.7 million acres, an area twice the size of the state of Delaware. "If the Cuyabeno-Imuya and Yasuni national parks are indeed protected from commercial and colonial development," added RAN's Shannon Wright, "Ecuador will establish itself as the regional leader in protecting the Amazon basin." The two parks, located near each other, are near Ecuador's borders with Peru and Colombia. They contain a vast system of environmentally sensitive rivers and lakes and provide a home for some of the world's most endangered plants and animals. The two parks are the ancestral homeland of 10,000 indigenous peoples, including the Huaorani, many of whom who have steadfastly resisted outside contact. This degree also protects the homelands of the nomadic Tagaeri and Taromenare peoples from any future oil development. The parks will remain open to ecotourism. Rainforest Action Network calls for an end to new fossil fuel exploration, beginning with projects slated for fragile ecosystems, wherever the local community objects, and in areas where isolated, traditional indigenous people live. Also, RAN's campaign calls on the international community - particularly financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund - to recognize the ecological debt owed by the North to the South, and to directly support renewable energy technologies in developing countries such as Ecuador. |