Ottawa to study oil-eating bacteria in Nunavut waters

A microscopic look at one type of bacterium which naturally feasts on petroleum. (PHOTO COURTESY CHARLES GREER/NRC)

While northerners grapple with the spill potential associated with future oil extraction beneath the waters where they fish and hunt, the federal government’s industrial research body is studying whether tiny organisms can help to dispel their fears.

The National Research Council, which conducts research on behalf of Industry Canada, just received funding and territorial approval to continue a multi-year study of oil-eating bacteria that naturally exist in sea water.

Charles Greer, the veteran NRC microbiologist who’s leading the study, which will sample waters near Resolute Bay this fall, said recently that the use of naturally existing organisms to help deal with a crude oil spill is not new.

Their abilities were documented during the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010: Greer said that oil degrading bacteria increased to represent 90 percent of the total bacteria in the oil plume area.

Now NRC scientists want to find out which oil-eating bacteria are present in Arctic waters and conduct laboratory experiments on water samples in an effort to make those bacteria consume more petroleum and do so more quickly and efficiently.

“There are bacteria that are so specific to degrading oil components that they can’t eat anything else,” Greer said.

“So these are the kinds of organisms you want around, and you want to be able to have an influence on their numbers, and their activity, if there was an oil spill. That’s the holy grail we’re after in all of this.”

According to documents filed with the Nunavut Impact Review Board, the project is part of the NRC’s efforts to grow scientific data related to frontier fossil fuel exploration and to, among other things, “provide knowledge on the capacity of the Arctic marine system to clean itself in the case of accidental oil inputs into the environment.”

A background document on this project, formally titled “Program of Energy Research and Development (PERD)” mentions the need to understand how oil behaves under and inside sea ice in order to inform Canada’s future regulatory regime in this area.

“With anticipated increases in both marine traffic in the Northwest Passage due to climate change and industrial operations, inevitable spillages that occur during routine operations and transport are expected,” it says.

“A lack of scientific knowledge for the development of sound policies and regulations may temper the development of Canada’s oil and gas industry.”

An Arctic oil spill would require human intervention as well, Greer said, to keep oil away from coastlines, for example.

But the NRC team will be focusing on enhancing the capacity of marine bacteria by adding nutrients to the water, for instance, or dispersants that break up the oil into smaller particles for quicker consumption.

Greer said they would also be studying how “non-target” organisms are impacted when those nutrients and dispersants are added to the water.

“The work proposed here is unique in that no one else is producing data of this type for the Canadian Arctic,” the backgrounder says.

Emilien Pelletier is an expert in oil-eating bacteria. But he’s not convinced they can do much in the Arctic.

Pelletier is the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Ecotoxicology in Coastal Areas at Université du Québec à Rimouski.

He said oil-eating bacteria work well in warm waters, but the rate of bioremediation — oil consumption by organisms — slows to a crawl when water temperatures near the freezing mark, which accounts for at least nine months of the year in the Arctic Ocean.

“Temperature is a major, major fact. Below the ice, forget it,” he said. “I am a big fan of bio-degradation. It’s my main work. But we have to be realistic. Bacteria cannot work at low temperatures. It’s the law of nature.”

Therefore, Pelletier said, an oil spill in the fall or winter would remain in and under the ice until the spring melt. That in itself poses several problems, he said.

If it gets trapped in ice, it can be transported great distances over the winter because ice does not stay in one place, he said.

If it remains under the ice, it can also impede algae growth.

As soon as sunlight starts to penetrate the thick Arctic sea ice, algae start to form on its underside, feeding the tiny marine zooplankton, krill larvae and fish larvae, which form the base of the Arctic marine food chain.

A spill in winter could cause petroleum to pool under ice preventing that algae from growing and also creating a toxic environment for marine organisms in the area.

Because the Arctic has such a short production season, the growth of this algae, and these tiny organisms, is crucial to the survival of larger fish and marine mammals, Pelletier said.

And even if oil remediation technology advances, Arctic drilling would likely take place in very cold, very remote areas, he added. Getting crews to the location of a spill, and then cleaning it up, would require tremendous skill and effort.

“Low bio-degradation, low infrastructure, severe conditions — all these things together make my personal conclusion, and the conclusion of many people around the world — that an accident in the Arctic would be a fantastic catastrophe,” Pelletier said.

But, he added, if deep-pocketed oil companies conclude that an Arctic drilling project could be profitable, they can move mountains, and governments, to make it happen.