Thread: Giant Greenland ice island threatens shipping, oil platforms

Aug 10, 2010

Will giant Greenland ice island threaten shipping, oil platforms?

07:03 PM
By NASA/AP

That massive ice island that broke off a Greenland glacier last week could potentially threaten North Atlantic shipping lanes and oil platforms off Canada, scientists say.

"It's so big that you can't prevent it from drifting. You can't stop it," Jon-Ove Methlie Hagen, a glaciologist at the University of Oslo, told the AP.

The island, estimated to be about 100 square miles, or about four times bigger than Manhattan, broke off the Petermann Glacier and is drifting toward the Nares Strait, separating Greenland from Ellsemere Island in Canada. If it reaches the strait before the winter freeze, which normally begins in September, the ice shelf would be carried south along Canada's east coast and reach shipping lanes and oil platforms off Newfoundland in one to two years, scientists say.

Though the behemoth would be expected to break apart after fender-benders with icebergs and islands, giant fragments might survive in the same waters where the Titanic sank in 1912.

The Canadian ice forecaster who first spotted the ice island on satellite images Thursday warned about the potential threat to oil platforms in the Grand Banks. Trudy Wohlleben said that although smaller icebergs can be redirected by towing or spraying them with water cannons, this one is too big.

"I don't think they could do that with an iceberg this large," she said. "They would have to physically move the rig."

Stay tuned.
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Picture @

http://www.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/Index

I don't know about threatening ships an oil platforms but should produce lots of drinking water