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Каспинфо август 2001 |
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Название: Экологические проблемы Каспия. Материалы на англ. яз. Главные Пункты: * По результатам экспедиции КаспНИРХ установлено, что причиной массовой гибели кильки на Каспии стало нефтяное загрязнение, уровень которого в районе Нефтяных камней 19 раз превышает норму. * Анализ проблем, связанных с разработкой месторождения Кашаган: - бурение создает прямую угрозу уникальным каспийским тюленям и осетру, составляющему 80% от всемирной популяции, ущерб от потери которых не покроет страховка ОКИОК в $500 млн.; - самая серьезная проблема при бурении на Кашагане - непредсказуемо изменяющийся под воздействием ряда факторов уровень воды в Каспии; и т.д. (14.08.2001) Полный Текст Экологические проблемы Каспия. Материалы на англ. яз. Экологические проблемы Каспия. Материалы на англ. яз. *** Russian Environmental Digest -- the world's major English-language press on environmental issues in Russia 23 July - 29 July 2001, Vol. 3, No. 30 Ecologists Explain Sprat Extinction by Oil Operations AssA-Irada, July 26, 2001 The scientific research expedition carried out by the Astrakhan-based Caspian Science and Research Fishery Institute on board the "Prognosis" vessel has discovered a massive concentration of dead sprats in the northern and southern Caspian (excluding Iran's southern coast). The highest density of the dead fish was registered in an area from Bautino, Kazakhstan, to northern Turkmenistan. The water and fish analysis has shown an increased water pollution of the basin. According to the Caspian Ecological Program's Russian center, the concentration of hydrocarbons in the Caspian exceeds the allowable concentration by an average of 19 times, while reaching extremely high benchmarks in the vicinity of Oil Rocks. Pollution with hydrocarbons in the northern Caspian is four times lower. Although Russia has been concealing information concerning the situation in the Terek and Volga rivers, competent sources say there are small oil refineries on the Terek, which dump huge quantities of hydrocarbons into the Caspian. It is therefore, no wonder that the number of dead sprats in that area was particularly high. Especially dangerous are flooded oil wells in Kazakhstan, where restoration is nearly impossible due to the loss of necessary documentation following the break-up of the Soviet Union. The Astrakhan scientists are determined to push ahead with the research throughout the Caspian. *** Excellent in-depth story on N. Caspian drilling, mentioning Galina -J 14 Are The Oil Giants Out of Their Depth? Financial Times (London), July 14, 2001 By David Buchan From afar, across the light blue waters of the north Caspian, it looks like an island church in the Venetian lagoon. Closer up, the duomo turns out to be a drilling tower, the basilica an enormous platform, and together they are a remarkable tribute to what people will do to get oil. The Sunkar rig (Kazakh for eagle) started life as a Nigerian swamp barge. It was towed through the Mediterranean, across the Black Sea, up the Don, down the Volga, to Astrakhan where Russian welders added side pontoons that tripled its width to the dimension of a football field. It now sits 50km out in the waters of Kazakhstan in all of 4 metres of water, resting on a slightly built-up "berm", and at several times its original weight of 7,400 tonnes with all the drilling equipment needed to map out the dimensions of the Kashagan oilfield. No one in their right mind would go to such lengths to mount such an invasion of the shallows of the north Caspian, if Kashagan were not considered the largest potential oil reserve found in the world in the past two decades. In one sense, Kashagan is a godsend. Discoveries in established oil provinces have declined in size. So, to sustain the world's ever-growing appetite for oil, the industry is pushing the limits of technology and geography to prospect in places such as the deep water off west Africa. Politicians, too, are taking more chances. President George W. Bush is risking the wrath of the US environmental lobby by proposing to open up part of Alaska's hitherto sacrosanct wildlife refuge to drilling. At best, it probably holds only half Kashagan's reserves. Kashagan could be vast. Sunkar has drilled two exploratory wells 40km apart, and found oil in each. The supposition that the two wells form part of the same oil-bearing structure has led some analysts to guess it could hold 4Obn barrels, though only part of that will be recoverable. To pursue this potential prize, nine oil companies, including the majors ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalFinaElf and Agip, the exploration wing of Italy's Eni took the unusual step of putting all their concessions together and forming the Offshore Kazakhstan International Oil Consortium (Okioc) to exploit Kashagan. But the challenges are enormous. "I think it would almost have been a relief for many of us if we hadn't found oil," says a senior executive of one of the companies involved. While the environment is a challenge to Okioc, whose rigs also have to contend with wind-driven ice piles in winter, Okioc also poses a serious challenge to the environment. Drilling in the north Caspian poses greater potential ecological risks than, for instance, anything Bush has proposed for Alaska. The Caspian has no scouring tide to clean it, and its northern part has no depth to disperse oil spills. This giant paddling pool (the north Caspian's average depth is 3.3 metres) is home to the unique Caspian seal, and to 80 per cent of the world's caviar - the deltas of the Volga and Ural rivers which flow into the north Caspian are the sturgeon's main breeding grounds. "No financial payment can compensate for damage done to the environment," says Serikbek Daukeyev, the akim (governor) of the Atyrau region, into which Kashagan falls. But this former environment minister in the central Kazakh government makes it clear he will pursue any claims against Okioc, stressing that "the risks should be insured". They are. Quite apart from the liability precautions of its individual member companies, Okioc itself has taken out a Dollars 500m insurance policy - a record for a single field. So far it has only paid a tiny fine (Dollars 300) for a tiny spill (200 litres) from Sunkar. But the risks will grow. When BP recently decided to sell its 9 per cent share in Kashagan, it said the reason was that it would never have had the same influence as other majors with 14 per cent each. But environmental worries and liabilities are also said to have been behind BP's retreat. If the Kazakhs are watching Okioc like a hawk, Agip, Kashagan's new operator, is under equal scrutiny from its partners. The Italian company was voted into the operatorship in a classic round of oil industry machinations that ended in a Heathrow airport hotel in February. The Italians' victory came after their bigger brethren cancelled each other out. Shell, by its own admission, made itself unpopular for the early delays and cost overruns in the construction of Sunkar for which it was responsible. ExxonMobil's partners thought having a US company in charge might foreclose the possibility of eventually shipping Kashagan oil through Iran. TotalFinaElf tried to buy its way into the operator's chair by offering Dollars 600m for the Kashagan shares of BP and Statoil of Norway. But it was blocked by ExxonMobil and Shell which TotalFinaElf executives surmise - wanted to prevent the newly merged TotalFina and Elf from cementing their progress. "So the Italians won because they were the least objectionable," says one executive of another company. But Kashagan is years from full development, and Agip may find its partners - Exxon is mentioned - only too willing to take over if the Italians slip up. It is not the Italian way to play hard ball. So far, the main sign of the new regime is the appearance of espresso coffee machines in Atyrau, the operational headquarters of Okioc, and the careworn admission by Andrea Chiura, Okioc's on-the-spot manager, that he will have to spend even more time in Atyrau and less in his native Bologna. Agip is keeping the management headquarters in The Hague (placed there when Shell played the main part in Kashagan's start-up). "We will share core positions with our partners," Chiura says. We have no intention of filling 100 per cent ourselves." But the 51-year-old Italian acknowledges that Kashagan is the biggest challenge of a career that has taken him to Libya, Norway, Tunisia and Azerbaijan. And Agip is fielding others from its A-team. Last month, for A instance, it brought in a new seismic team led by Davide Calcagni, who after recent service in Aberdeen has been tracking Kashagan from Milan. Agip, he says, has kept a full capacity in the acquisition of seismic data which some other companies farm out, as well as seismic data interpretation, which all the companies still do. Other new arrivals are being brought in from China, and from Nigeria via Milan. At the Okioc hotel, they drink water, and after dinner head back to the computers to continue reading the seismic runes - in contrast to their northern European counterparts' penchant to sink a few after-work beers. They almost seem to want, in the face of a certain scepticism from their partners, to remind everyone that just as the Romans once supervised works across the known world, so they can do so again in the unknowns of Kashagan. The biggest unknown is the water level. "The real curse of the Caspian is its variability," says Gerry, an Okioc engineer. The Caspian's general level has, for reasons essentially unknown but perhaps relating to tectonic plate movement, fluctuated. It gradually declined from 1940 to the late 1970s, then rose quite sharply until the mid-1990s, only to subside since. But the wind, sweeping down from Russia or across the Kazakh steppes, cars cause far more rapid fluctuations. "Ifs like blowing across a saucer of water," explains an Okioc employee. One day last month, for instance, the level around the Sunkar dropped by 1 metre, or 25 per cent, forcing tugs and supply boats to manoeuvre to avoid running aground. With a shallow gradient of 10,000:1 a change of 1 metre for every 10km these surges and retreats can temporarily move parts of the coastline up to 30km inland or up to 10km offshore. The surges can turn nasty in winter. They produce ice floes, piled up on each other by the wind against any solid form such as a rig. To guard against this, the Astrakhan welders put high steel sides on the Sunkar. Okioc is also experimenting with pylons and rock piles to provide ice-breaks away from the rig. The consortium has turned to Arctic solutions for escape vehicles. It has bought Canadian-made Arktos rescue vehicles. Each resembles two first world war tanks yoked together so that one helps the other to clamber in and off ice and water. So far they have not been used, and may never be. But in regular use - in this technophile's paradise - are two Finnish-built, Dutch-operated, ice-breaking supply ships. Faced with thick ice, ice-breakers usually rely on driving themselves up on to the ice, and using their weight to break it. In the shallow north Caspian this would simply drive the boat into the seabed. So the Wagenborg boats - named, predictably, Arcticaborg and Antarcticaborg - have propellers that can swivel through 360 degrees. If the boats hit trouble, they turn round and go in backwards, chewing up the ice with their propellers. As if Kashagan did not have hazards enough, its oil - in common with onshore Kazakh oil - comes with a high degree of hydrogen sulphide, H2S, a poisonous gas. To guard against a release of this gas, the 80 workers on the Sunkar all have emergency oxygen masks and canisters to hand. Eventually, says Ron Steinbring, the Sunkar's beefy Dutch drilling supervisor, the H2S gas can be injected into spare wells - but only when there are some depleted wells. In the same way, it may be possible to dump the cores, or "cuttings", of earth from new wells into old wells. But for now they are laboriously transported back to the Kashagan logistics base at Bautino and buried in clay-lined pits. While these problems may ease as the scale of work increases, a different set of issues arises, and troubles Galina Chernova. She is a former employee of the state ecology department in Atyrau, and now runs that rare thing in Kazakhstan, a non-governmental organisation called the Centre for Ecological Legal Initiatives. She wants to stop Kashagan, or at least reduce its scale and impact. "The waters are just too shallow for an oil-field," she says. "The regional and state inspectors (of Kazakhstan) are not equipped to control emissions even from Okioc's present operations." She understands that Kashagan could end up with as many as 82 wells. Okioc does not dispute the possibility that if it proves successful, Kashagan might eventually have 82 wells. "It could be more," says Graham Johnson, Okioc's environmental supervisor, who points out that a typical North Sea platform would drill 30-40 wells. But he rejects any notion that Okioc is lightly regulated: "We are already controlled to the nth degree by the Kazakh authorities. For instance, treated sewage dumped into the by sea from the Sunkar is measured against 16 parameters three times a week, while in the North Sea it would be measured against three parameters once every three months. If the country isn't careful, it will weigh people down with minutiae and miss the bigger picture." The bigger picture is coming into view. Okioc has already decided its second rig will be on land, on an artificial island being built with 200,000 tonnes of rock brought from Bautino. How many such islands will there be? Neither Andrea Chiura nor Graham Johnson will, or can, say. But the latter points out that "there are plenty of islands in the Caspian which come and go naturally because of the wind movements". There won't be 82 islands, however, even if there are 82 wells, because each rig, whether on a barge or on land, can drill several wells - one vertical and several off at an angle. Johnson, however, warns against putting too much faith in western horizontal drilling techniques: the record for a horizontal well is about 5km, and Kashagan's distance from the shore is 10 times that. What Kashagan shows dramatically is how difficult the balance of risk and reward is becoming as the world runs out of easy oil deposits. Ordinary Kazakhs are understandably nervous. In the late 1980s, an oil fire at Tengiz burned for a year, and they know that a comparable accident at Kashagan could be disastrous. Yet it is the Daukayevs, not the Chernovas, that run the country. "Kashagan will determine the economy of our country," says the Atyrau governor. The oil companies also have a balance to strike. They will be pushing for profit and recompense on their big Kashagan outlays, but equally know what damage a big Caspian oil spill could do to their worldwide image. |