Offshore Oil and Gas Rush Threatens Whale Corridors and Coral Reefs

From coral reefs in Kenya to Caribbean seagrass meadows and whale migration corridors in the Arctic, a surge in offshore oil, gas and liquefied natural gas development is spreading into some of the world’s most ecologically important marine habitats, according to a new analysis.

In many cases, researchers from Earth Insight—a nonprofit that maps fossil fuel, mining and other industrial threats to ecosystems and local communities—found planned and active offshore oil and gas projects overlap with areas meant to safeguard critical ecosystems. 

More than a quarter of the marine and coastal protected areas examined across 11 countries fall within zones at risk for oil and gas development, as are 40 percent of coral reefs and nearly a third of mangrove forests. In these same countries, half of all areas used by whales and other marine mammals for migration, feeding and breeding also converge with areas designated by governments for exploration and extraction referred to as oil and gas blocks. 

“It is alarming to see the research findings and the sheer scale of fossil fuel expansion trajectories threatening the health and future of our shared ocean,” said Tyson Miller, executive director of Earth Insight, which worked with a dozen other civil society groups to produce the report, Fossil Fuel Threats to the Ocean: Marine Life and Coastal Communities at Risk.  

This expansion reflects a growing trend in the fossil fuel industry to pursue prospects offshore, said Bruna Campos, senior campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law and co-coordinator of the Fossil-Free Ocean Initiative, who was not involved in the analysis. 

“The next frontier is in the ocean,” she said. 

This shift is being driven in part by increasing resistance to new terrestrial drilling, particularly on Indigenous lands, as well as advances in technology that have made deeper waters more accessible for development, Campos said.  

“The idea that it’s in the ocean, out of sight, out of mind, definitely plays a role in companies thinking, ‘We can do this. We don’t have to fight over land ownership.’” 

But in many cases, offshore areas of interest are vital to coastal and Indigenous communities that depend on them for food, livelihoods and cultural practices, according to the report. 

In Kenya, for example, researchers found that proposed offshore oil and gas blocks overlap with 100 percent of the country’s coastal coral reefs, mangrove forests and marine protected areas, particularly in the Lamu Basin, which supports some of the country’s most productive fishing grounds. 

“Right now, Kenya is preparing to open ecologically sensitive areas for fossil fuel exploration,” said Muturi wa Kamau, from the Kenya Oil and Gas Working Group—a public interest network that advocates for sustainable energy. “At what cost are we willing to risk these fragile ecosystems and the livelihoods of coastal communities who have depended on them for generations?” Kamau asked in a press release for the report.

In an interview with Inside Climate News, Kamau said fishers have already clashed with oil exploration crews after fishing nets became entangled with hydrophones used during seismic surveys. “These guys would actually come with knives and cut the nets,” he said. “For communities, that essentially means no fish catch for that day.”

Indigenous communities in Alaska that rely on hunting and fishing could also be affected by a proposed 800-mile liquefied natural gas pipeline that would transport gas from the North Slope in the Arctic to Cook Inlet. If the project moves forward, researchers say the extensive infrastructure that would be needed would threaten salmon fisheries and other important species like halibut and herring, disrupting critical food systems and long-standing cultural traditions. 

It would also jeopardize the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale. The report warns LNG activity could increase large-vessel traffic through the inlet by 40 to 70 percent, adding underwater noise that could inhibit the whales’ ability to hear, communicate and find food.

“Current shipping traffic in Cook Inlet is already so noisy that it exceeds beluga whale harassment thresholds on a near-daily basis,” said Ben Boettger, energy policy analyst for Cook Inletkeeper, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the watershed, in a press release. “If completed, the Alaska LNG pipeline would increase vessel traffic to disastrous levels, further threatening these critically endangered whales and the communities connected to them.”

Underwater noise and the increased risk of ship strikes emerged as recurring threats to whales and other marine mammals across several regions highlighted in the report. In Mexico’s Gulf of California, proposed LNG tanker routes would pass through habitat used by endangered blue whales, California gray whales, orcas and the critically endangered vaquita porpoise. North Atlantic humpback whales moving through the Barents Sea in Norway could also be impacted by proposed offshore oil and gas activity, as could pygmy whales in Australia’s Otway Basin and southern right whales in Argentina’s Gulf of San Matías. 

To limit those impacts, the report’s authors recommend that governments halt current extractive activities in marine protected areas and other biodiversity hotspots and stop approving new offshore oil and gas projects in or near them. 

The recommendations come as nearly 200 countries work toward protecting 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030—a global conservation goal known as “30×30,” adopted under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to help halt and reverse biodiversity loss. The U.S. is not a party to that agreement, and North America is expected to double its LNG export capacity in the next few years. 

Miller, from Earth Insight, said the conservation target offers governments a chance to pair new marine protections with restrictions on offshore oil and gas development.

“Country commitments to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030 represent a unique opportunity to restrict fossil fuel blocks and concessions in order to uphold the integrity of existing and future marine protected areas, whale and marine mammal corridors, and the health of coral reefs, seagrasses, and mangroves and the communities who depend on them,” he said.