Anchorage: Call for a timeout on (Shell) drilling in the Arctic Ocean's Chukchi Sea

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http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2010/shell-oil-chukchi-sea-drilling-plans-challenged.html


Shell Oil Chukchi Sea Drilling Plans Challenged
Analysis of impacts sorely lacking
January 20, 2010

Anchorage, AK -- Conservation and Alaska Native groups called for a timeout on oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean's Chukchi Sea yesterday, filing a legal challenge against Shell Oil's permit to drill in the region next summer. The U.S. Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) approved drilling in the Chukchi Sea after doing only an abbreviated and internal review of its potential harms and despite significant concerns surrounding Shell's oil leases.

Last spring, a federal appeals court told the Interior Department that it needed to take a more complete look at how oil and gas development would harm the area's environment -– an assignment the Interior Department has not finished despite moving forward with approving Shell's drilling. Additionally, the lease sale for the leases on which Shell would drill is also the subject of unresolved litigation in the Alaska Federal District Court.

Under Shell's plan, a huge 514-foot-long drill ship and an armada of support vessels and aircraft would patrol the waters of the icy Arctic Ocean, generating industrial noise in the ocean, emitting tons of air pollutants, including heat-trapping gases, and thousands of barrels of water pollutants. The Chukchi Sea is habitat for endangered bowhead whales, threatened polar bears, walrus and a host of other wildlife -- many of which are vital to sustaining the thousands-year old subsistence way of life of Alaska Native coastal communities.

Shell's plan to drill in the Chukchi Sea is part of a larger Arctic drilling program slated to begin in 2010. Last October, Secretary Salazar also approved Shell's plan to drill up to three wells in the Beaufort Sea in 2010, also after only cursory environmental review. In December, conservation and Alaska Native groups challenged that approval.
In addition to the Interior Department's approval of Shell's drilling, Shell still needs air emissions and ocean discharge permits from the

Environmental Protection Agency. It also needs marine mammal harassment permits from the National Marine Fisheries Service. These agencies can take a different path than Interior.

Secretary Salazar's approval of Shell's drilling also runs directly counter to other federal agencies' initiatives to manage the region with a science-based approach, including a protective Arctic Fisheries Management Plan adopted by the Department of Commerce.


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