Tension at the Edge of Alaska
A bone from a Bowhead whale skull rests on the arctic shore outside of Barrow as monument to the defining role that whaling plays for this coastal community.
By JAD MOUAWADBARROW, Alaska — Each summer and fall, the Inupiat, natives of Alaska’s arid north coast, take their sealskin boats and gun-fired harpoons and go whale hunting. Kills are celebrated throughout villages as whaling captains share their catch with relatives and neighbors. Muktuk, or raw whale skin and blubber, is a prized delicacy.
The culture and traditions of the Inupiat revolve around whaling and seasonal hunting, which could be disrupted by a Prudhoe Bay-style oil development.
But now, that traditional way of life is coming into conflict with one of the modern world’s most urgent priorities: finding more oil.
Royal Dutch Shell is determined to exploit vast reserves believed to lie off Alaska’s coast. The Bush administration backs the idea and has issued offshore leases in recent years totaling an area nearly the size of Maryland.
Those leases have received far less attention than failed efforts to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but they may prove to be far more important. By some estimates, the oil under the Alaskan seabed could exceed the reserves remaining in the rest of the United States, though how much might ultimately be recoverable is uncertain.
Shell is eager to find out. It tried to make headway this summer, only to be stopped by an unusual alliance of Inupiat whalers and environmental groups who filed a suit in federal court.
They argue that noisy drilling off the Alaska coast could disrupt migration routes for the bowhead whales, making it impossible for the Inupiat to capture their allotted share of about 60 animals per year. A court hearing is scheduled for today to consider whether the company can move forward, though a ruling is not expected for months.
Native communities are not unalterably opposed to oil production — on the contrary, many rely on oil for their livelihoods. The North Slope Borough, a countylike governmental unit the size of Minnesota where most of Alaska’s 10,000 Inupiat live, gets the bulk of its $98 million budget each year from taxing onshore oil operations.
Native corporations also derive a large part of their business from serving the oil industry in Prudhoe Bay. Community leaders are caught between a desire to preserve traditional whaling and the economic necessity of permitting the oil industry to move into new areas.
“It’s a hell of a dilemma,” said Edward S. Itta, the mayor of the North Slope Borough, who is opposed to Shell’s drilling plans. “Without a doubt, America’s energy needs are way up, and something’s going to happen up there. It’s a way of life against an opposing value. This way of life has value; nobody can put it in dollars and cents.”
The oil resources off Alaska’s coast amount to some 27 billion barrels, according to government estimates, about the same as the original reserves of the giant Prudhoe Bay field discovered in 1968. That would be enough to satisfy America’s total oil consumption for three years if every last drop could be pumped, which is unlikely.
It is a tantalizing bonanza for the Bush administration, which has strongly backed exploration to make up for a decline in domestic oil production; for oil companies, which are scouring the world to find new supplies; and for Alaskan authorities, who need to keep the trans-Alaska pipeline flowing.
Returning to the Sea
Oil off Alaska’s coast is hardly a new discovery. Soon after petroleum was found under the North Slope 40 years ago, companies began to suspect there might be oil under the Beaufort Sea and beyond.
Shell was one of the early pioneers of Arctic exploration in the following decades but it abandoned the region along with other companies after the oil price collapse of the mid-1980s. Five years ago, as the company sought new places to drill, Shell geologists dusted off their old seismic surveys. They identified a spot called Hammerhead, where the company had first drilled in 1985. They renamed it Sivulliq, meaning “the first one” in Inupiat, and decided to drill there. The area, about 15 miles offshore in 110 feet of water, is just opposite the western coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
If you look at the Arctic, this is an incredibly important energy resource for the United States,”said Marvin Odum, Shell’s executive vice president for the Americas.
“Going in with paced development is the right way to go.”
Roxanne Brower cuts muktuk (raw whale meat and skin) into small pieces for her daughter Lauren.
North of Alaska’s Brooks Mountain Range, seen in an aerial view, Royal Dutch Shell is preparing to undertake an urgent offshore search for more oil reserves.
Mr. Odum says Shell is respectful of native rights and can safely drill in the Beaufort Sea without disturbing whales or whalers. The company offered to shut drilling operations during the whaling season and said it would monitor migration routes with the latest equipment, including unmanned aerial drones.
In February, Shell obtained its drilling permit from the Minerals Management Service, a government agency in charge of overseeing oil and gas production in federal waters. That allowed it to bring in a small armada of ships and emergency craft to prepare for the drilling season, which lasts 90 to 120 days in the summer, when the Beaufort Sea is largely free of ice.
But in April, environmental groups sued the agency, which is part of the Interior Department, asserting it had not taken adequate account of the risks any oil spill would pose to whales and other species.
The plaintiffs, later joined by the North Slope Borough and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, won an injunction in July from a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, which ordered Shell not to drill while the case was under review. In September, the company lost an important ruling, effectively ending this year’s drilling efforts.
Both sides will present their arguments today, and the court is expected to rule before the next drilling season.
Mr. Odum, whose responsibilities at Shell span the Western Hemisphere, spent three days this summer as an observer on a hunt that captured two whales. The experience, he said, gave him a “visceral understanding” of whaling’s importance to native people, who refer to themselves interchangeably as Inupiat or Eskimos.
“The issue is how do we do this together in a way that does not interfere with the whale hunt,” Mr. Odum said. The company repainted one of its larger boats from bright orange to white and blue to make it less annoying to whales. It also reached an agreement with whalers on right of passage during the whaling season.
Despite the delays, Shell believes that its exploration program will be allowed to resume next year. In a bid to reach out to the Inupiat, the company says it spent several million dollars in community development projects on the North Slope; it declined to provide a specific figure. It gave $250,000, for example, to a science and engineering program at the University of Alaska geared toward native students.
But the company’s opponents argue that Shell moved into Alaska too aggressively, surprised the Inupiat with the scale of its operations and did a poor job of reaching out to them. “This lawsuit was a way of getting everyone’s attention and to get our concerns addressed,” said Mr. Itta, the mayor.
New Wave of Development
“To say that the oil and gas industry succeeds does not mean that our culture fails,”Mr. Glenn said.
The controversy on the North Slope is the most visible sign of a new wave of oil development in Alaska. The Interior Department has been auctioning rights in the Beaufort Sea for five years, and it plans more sales there .
Environmentalists are concerned about what they see as the unchecked expansion of the oil industry in Alaska. They said they saw no contradiction in their support for native rights, including whaling rights, and their long-term effort to protect whales and other species.
“The bowhead whale is an icon of cultural identity for the Inupiat people,”
“Our concerns are over human rights issues, access for subsistence users to resources, and the protection of endangered species.”
The bowhead whale — Balaena mysticetus — is a member of the right whale family. Its skull is so powerful that it can crash through two feet of ice to reach the surface to breathe. Its numbers were greatly reduced in the era of commercial whaling, but it has made a modest recovery, and hunting by the Inupiat is not considered a threat.
From the Inupiat perspective, the big fear about oil drilling is that the inevitable noise will drive whales so far offshore they will be impossible to hunt with the limited traditional gear that villagers use.
Whale Meat in the Kitchen
In Barrow, signs of the whales can be found everywhere. Their curved skulls are displayed in front of public buildings and along the town’s coastline. The high school mascot is a smiling harpoon-wielding whaler.
“This is a community that depends on the Arctic Ocean for survival,”said Charles F. Hopson, a member of Barrow’s whaling commission.
The other day, an Eskimo named Lewis Brower took out a hunting knife, opened his refrigerator and lopped off a big chunk of raw whale meat. He cut a sliver for his 2-year-old daughter, Lauren, who gulped it between sips from a bottle.
“Nothing tastes like it,”Mr. Brower said.
Mr. Brower’s home, at the end of a wind-swept street, is decorated with pictures of whaling campaigns. He explained that a few weeks previously, he spent 12 hours helping butcher a 47-foot-long whale that was landed by Mayor Itta’s crew. It was carved on the beach and divided among village families. The captain’s wife cooked a big dinner for the entire village that evening.
Mr. Brower, whose family has had 32 years of uninterrupted success catching whales, is concerned that these traditions, which have united villagers and helped them survive for centuries, might get lost in an offshore drilling boom.
“They’re coming to our lands and disturbing our ancestral way of life,” he said. “How would you feel if I drilled in the middle of the New York Harbor?”
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