‘Amazon of the Seas’ Threatened by Oil and Gas Developments

A new report warns fossil fuel developments in the Coral Triangle pose increased risks for ecological disaster in the ocean.

Last year, in late February, an oil tanker named the Princess Empress sank off the east coast of Mindoro Island in the Philippines. Up to 200,000 gallons of thick black industrial oil poured into the Philippine Sea’s crystalline waters, contaminating coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangrove forests. More than than 20,000 families whose livelihoods depended on fishing and tourism were rendered jobless and short on food for several months. 

This disaster, described in a newly released report, is one example of a multitude of threats coastal communities and marine life have faced, and will continue to endure, as countries continue to depend on and expand fossil fuel operations throughout the Coral Triangle, one of the most ecologically important areas on the planet. 

The Coral Triangle is a marine area that includes ocean and coastal waters in Southeast Asia and the Pacific and is so rich in biodiversity it has been nicknamed the “Amazon of the Seas.” It spans more than 4 million square miles across seven countries including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, the Solomon Islands and Singapore. It hosts nearly 80 percent of the world’s coral species and 30 percent of its reefs. 

The report, Coral Triangle at Risk: Fossil Fuel Threats and Impacts, was released in October at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Cali, Colombia, known as COP16, where world leaders urged each other to protect 30 percent of lands and seas by 2030 in order to curb a growing global biodiversity crisis. It calls for a moratorium on offshore drilling for oil and gas, and a moratorium on the expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) operations where vulnerable habitats and coastal communities may be affected.

“All countries need to phase out fossil fuel as a key strategy to protect biodiversity, to promote the 30 by 30 targets,” said one of the report’s contributors, Gerry Arances, executive director at the Center for Energy, Ecology and Development (CEED), a non-governmental organization based in the Philippines that advocates for a clean and just energy transition. CEED co-published the report with SkyTruth, a nonprofit that uses satellite imagery to illuminate environmental problems, and Earth Insight, which maps fossil fuel threats to key ecosystems. 

Toxic chemicals contained in oil can make fish unsafe to consume. Oil can also injure marine mammals and seabirds and asphyxiate mangrove trees when their complex root systems are smothered in the viscous substance. When corals come into contact with oil, they may stop growing or reproducing, if they are not killed outright, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

More than 100 areas designated for the extraction of fossil fuels, called oil and gas blocks, are currently producing in the Coral Triangle, according to satellite imagery and data collected and analyzed for the report. Four hundred fifty additional blocks are being explored for future oil and gas extraction. Cumulatively, the current and planned blocks add up to a surface area larger than Indonesia. 

“You have massive expansion of LNG terminals and exploration happening,” Arances said. In some cases, oil and gas blocks are located even in areas that are supposed to be protected from harmful human activity. 

Throughout the Coral Triangle, countries have designated more than 600 areas in the ocean as marine protected areas (MPAs). These areas are established specifically to conserve and restore key marine species and ecosystems by prohibiting activities in these protected zones that could negatively impact them. Each MPA may have different protections in place. Some may be fully protected, meaning zero extractive activities are allowed within their bounds. Others may allow for some fishing in some areas, or during some seasons, for example. Globally, only 3 percent of the ocean is fully protected, according to the Marine Protection Atlas, which tracks the creation and protection levels of MPAs worldwide. 

When effectively managed, scientists say MPAs are key tools to promoting healthy and resilient ocean ecosystems. They are also considered a key strategy to implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which mandates that the 196 countries which have pledged to implement the agreement protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030. 

But a scientific paper published earlier this year in Conservation Letters, A Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, reports a vast number of these areas lack regulations, and have consequently earned a reputation as “paper parks.” 

During COP16, a group of more than 70 marine scientists wrote an open letter—“Damaging industrial activities occurring within many MPAs threaten the benefits to people and nature that would result from preserving and restoring marine ecosystems and species”— calling on global leaders to acknowledge the harm done when these areas go unprotected. 

In the Coral Triangle, more than 120 million people rely on the ocean for food or their livelihoods. More than 500 species of reef-building corals provide habitat and protection for at least 2,000 different types of fish. 

“The coral reefs there are the most incredibly biodiverse in the world,” said Gabby Ahmadia, vice president of area-based conservation for the oceans program at WWF-US, who spent her early career working with local scientists in Indonesia to develop ecological monitoring programs. A scuba diver could dive a thousand times and still see new things each time, Ahmadia said. 

Most MPAs in the Coral Triangle have not had their protection levels assessed, according to the fossil fuel report. The Marine Protection Atlas shows that of the 24 MPAs that have been assessed in the region, less than half are actually protected. The others have merely been proposed. 

This lack of protection is clear from the overlap between oil and gas infrastructure, shipping traffic and related pollution across MPAs in the region.

Nearly a quarter of coral reefs in the Coral Triangle overlap with oil and gas blocks, as do 20 percent of seagrass beds and around 40 percent of mangrove forests. More than 20 MPAs in the Philippines were affected by the Princess Empress shipwreck last year. 

And more than 80 MPAs throughout the Coral Triangle are completely covered in oil and gas blocks, half of which are in Malaysia, according to the report. Many of them are still in the exploration phase, meaning licenses have been granted to companies to explore the viability of oil or gas extraction, but production has not yet started. The fact that they overlap at all with these protected areas is alarming, said John Amos, founder of SkyTruth. 

“It’s clearly the intention of national governments to pursue that revenue source,” he said. 

Climate change is already stressing coral reefs in the region. Like in many areas of the world, surging ocean temperatures have caused mass bleaching and mortality events in the Coral Triangle, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. This stress will be compounded if countries in the region choose to expand oil and gas operations near the reefs. 

“It would have devastating impacts if they were to pursue development,” said Ahmadia. 

Oil pollution linked to vessel traffic is also of great concern and is affecting some of these MPAs, said Amos, who has been using satellite imagery since 2020 to track oil slicks trailing behind vessels in the region that release untreated, oily wastewater into the ocean, a process known as bilge dumping.

“The Coral Triangle sits in the middle of one of the worst global hot spots of chronic oil pollution,” he said. 

According to Amos’s analysis, which is included in the report, the cumulative amount of oil released into the Coral Triangle by these ships could cover the landmass of the Solomon Islands. Thirty-five of these slicks infiltrated MPAs, particularly in Indonesia, which has the greatest amount of LNG vessel traffic.

“We hope that by raising the visibility of chronic oil pollution from global shipping that we see happening just about everywhere that we look in the ocean, and the double threat that’s also posed by the expansion of offshore oil and gas production that people who are concerned about protecting habitat and considering biodiversity are going to now start looking at that as another threat that they need to consider in advocating for 30 by 30 globally,” said Amos. 

Cover photo: Coast guard members clean up an oil slick that washed ashore from the sunken oil tanker Princess Empress on March 8, 2023 in Pola, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines. Credit: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images