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| courtesy: USCG |
Yesterday the international oil giant announced it would not drill this summer on its Chukchi and Beaufort Sea oil leases. The announcement came after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Department of Interior violated the National Environmental Protection Act when it sold leases to the oil industry under the Charlatan's administration. Sale 193 held in 2008 offered nearly 30 million acres in the Chukchi Sea for oil exploration. Prior to the sale there were no active offshore oil leases in the sea. A federal district court in Alaska determined the sale violated NEPA because very little was known about nearly every species living there or how they would be impacted by an oil spill. The court required the agency to reassess the environmental impact of the sale. Nevertheless the Obama administration reaffirmed the lease sale and an appeal followed. Once again the federal appeals court said the Department did not fairly consider the potential environmental impacts of development, but "skews the data toward fewer environmental impacts" which prevents a full and fair discussion of the issues of offshore drilling in Arctic extremes. The appellate decision was made in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of native and conservation groups. Shell's drilling program was substantially set back when its state-of-the-art conical drilling rig
Kulluk went aground near Kodiak Island
[photo] in January 2012. It was towed to safety without a major incident.