Joeri Thijs: A View from Greenpeace
While Russia moves to release the environmentalists held in prison for almost two months on hooliganism charges, Natural Gas Europe had the pleasure to meet Joeri Thijs, Senior Climate Campaigner at Greenpeace Belgium. We spoke about explorations in the Arctic, CCS and shale gas.
1. What is your viewpoint on natural gas usage and move to develop shales in Europe and hydrocarbon exploration in the Arctic?
It is a given fact, confirmed by the International Energy Agency, that if we want to avert catastrophic climate change, we need to keep most of the fossil fuels under the ground. That is a given fact, which goes for certainly Arctic oil and gas but also for shale oil and shale gas. Greenpeace believes that the future is not to go ever further, ever deeper in risky places looking for fossil fuels. We are convinced that we should go for alternative energy. We should go for reduction in energy use. We don’t believe in false alternatives as shale oil and shale gas.
2. What’s your viewpoint on CCS? Are CCS projects in Europe compatible with your requests?
No. The answer is clearly no. We believe it is a false illusion. It creates the perception that coal can still be part of a sustainable future. We are convinced that it is not. We are convinced that it is diverting money and budgets away from the sustainable resources we need to invest to avoid catastrophic climate change.
3. At the moment, the main target for your demonstration is Gazprom and not operators in the shale gas industry. Why is that?
That is for two reasons. Firstly, Gazprom wants to be the first oil company to get commercial oil out of the offshore Arctic. They have announced that they want to start commercial production on their Prirazlomnaya platform as early as next year. They will be most likely the first company to bring Arctic offshore oil into the market.
4. What’s the second reason?
Greenpeace has been engaged in a campaign against Arctic oil drilling over the past two years. In September this year, we have performed a peaceful action against the Gazprom Artic oil rig Prirazlomnaya. Gazprom has then asked the Russian authorities to intervene in this peaceful action. And, since, the 30 people that were involved in this action, including two freelance journalists, are detained. They are behind the bars in Russia. We think that they should not be in jail… We think that Gazprom should use the power it has in Russia – it has a huge influence both on politics and media – to ask the release of these people.
5. Apart from the particular issues you have with Gazprom, do you have any assessment of the on-going explorations in the Arctic Sea? Do you have any figures?
What we know is that there is a bunch of companies involved. For the moment Gazprom and Shell are the most important ones. We know now that over the last year a lot of projects have been cancelled or postponed. Shell in Alaska for example. They have put 5 million of dollars into their projects in Alaska, in the Arctic region. They have postponed them or cancelled them last year. ConocoPhillips has done the same in Alaska. Statoil has done the same in Alaska. There have been quite a few oil companies that have been seeing the difficulties and, if you ask Greenpeace, the irresponsibility of going for oil and gas in the Arctic region. For the moment, the biggest hotspot that still remains in the Arctic region is Russia. We have Gazprom that is convinced to go there. We know that it is irresponsible to do it because the circumstances made explorations way more difficult. The chances for an oil spill are much higher than anywhere else. And the capability of cleaning up and coping with an oil spill are completely impossible in such an environment.
6. Do you have any assessment of the costs for society and the environment in case of oil spills in the Arctic?
We have not seen any official figures on that. What we can assess is what happened in Alaska almost 25 years ago with Exxon Valdez. It is the only oil spill that happened in circumstances that can be more or less compared to the Arctic region. It was just out of the Arctic circle. But it was comparable. Less extreme weather, but still very cold waters and very windy. So 25 years after the accident, we still see the environmental consequences. We also have seen the consequences on the environment of the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, where the waters are much warmer and the circumstances are much less extreme than in the Arctic region. In the Gulf of Mexico there are also many more infrastructures that can be used to cope with an oil spill. On the other hand, the Arctic region is really poor in this kind of infrastructures. This means that if we will have an oil spill in such a fragile area it will be impossible to find feasible solutions. It would be really difficult to intervene.
Sergio Matalucci