A federal court has rejected an attempt by Shell Oil to preemptively sue the Sierra Club and a dozen other environmental groups to prevent challenges to its plans to drill in the Arctic Seas. Given that Shell wanted the court to block challenges to its drilling plans that hadn't even been made yet, perhaps the court's decision is unsurprising. However, it has real, positive, implications for the Arctic Ocean, and particularly for the Chukchi Sea.
As Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune noted at the time, Shell's message to anyone opposed to drilling the extreme conditions of the Arctic with this suit was clear: Get out of the way, there's money to be made. It’s a message still being used today.
Despite a disastrous 2012 drilling season (complete with the total failure of Shell's oil spill containment dome, federal investigations and fines, and the grounding of a drill ship) Shell is pushing not only to be let back into the Arctic Ocean, but to be allowed to drill under weaker regulations. The company wants to return to the Chukchi Sea with larger, noisier, and more polluting drilling plans as early as next summer.
A recent assessment from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management acknowledges that there is a 75 percent chance of a major oil spill if Shell is allowed to drill in the Chukchi Sea. With no proven way to clean up an oil spill in the Arctic, the effects would be devastating. Among the probable damages outlined in the assessment are "the loss of large numbers of polar bears," "many thousands of seals dying from crude exposure, especially ringed seal pups," marine and coastal bird deaths that could take "more than three generations to recover" including the "direct mortality of approximately 60,000 [Pacific] brant." Also affected will be large numbers of murres, puffins, kittiwakes, and bowhead whales. The list goes on and on.
As if a 75 percent risk of a major oil spill isn’t enough, opening the Arctic Ocean has a 100 percent chance of pushing the climate closer to an irreversible tipping point. The impacts of climate disruption are already being felt more acutely in the Arctic than anywhere else. The plight of the polar bear is one that has been well-publicized, but we're seeing now the ripple effect of ice loss and changes to the delicate Arctic natural balance. An unprecedented number of walrus were recently forced onto an Alaskan beach because of the lack of ice; subsistence cultures are threatened; and coastal erosion threatens whole villages. These are clear indications that we must do more to keep dirty fuels in the ground.
Shell, of course, has promises of safety (at one point the company even guaranteed it could clean up 100% of any oil spilled--a feat that has never even come close to being accomplished in much more favorable conditions). The real reason Shell thinks it should be allowed to drill however is that it deserves a payout for the $6 billion the company has foolishly invested in trying to drill the Arctic waters. The cost to the environment, to the Alaska Native subsistence culture, to Alaska's fishing economy, even to our climate are of no consequence; the company wants a fast track to potential profits and reestablishing its dwindling reserves.
It's time for Shell to acknowledge the risks posed by Arctic drilling, instead of trying to silence those who will hold the company accountable.
-- by Dan Ritzman, Alaksa Program Dirctor for the Our Wild America campaign