ANWR / arctic

THIS CATEGORY IS FOR ALL EFFORTS TO EXPAND US FF EXTRACTION in the Arctic, INCLUDING OFFSHORE (actually now there's now  sep for normal offshore)SEE ANWR ARCTIC 3 220 CAPTsee anwr 2 for newer

see anwr 2 7/16  ; this has been an amazing target

antagonist means pro-drilling (red)

purple means anti-drill, that is green/protection

==<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-bedrock-ice-sheet-2580330632.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-bedrock-ice-sheet-2580330632.html</a><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-temps-refreeze-plan-2258889584.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-temps-refreeze-plan-2258889584.html</a>
This is the third such <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-climate-change-2160436682.html" target="blank" style="color: rgb(82, 149, 70); text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">worryingly warm period</a> this winter and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-ice" target="blank" style="color: rgb(82, 149, 70); text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;">sea ice</a> figures released last week show the lowest January ice extent in satellite record—nearly 500,000 square miles below average.The situation in the region is so alarming that a team of scientists from Arizona State University have published a plan to "refreeze" the Arctic in the American Geophysical Union's journal Earth's Future. The fact that the $500 billion plan, which would use millions of wind pumps to circulate colder water to the surface of the ice, is even being discussed "reveals just how desperately worried researchers have become about the Arctic," reported the Guardian.
st'd bs that temps not up in last 20 years, and sea ice increasing (distortion of UK Met office?7/16 ggl suggests:"arctic sea ice growing at fastest rate in recorded history"iloveco2iceagenow.combut also weather undeground:Recent years have set a number of sea ice records in the Arctic. The summer of 2007 saw a "perfect storm" of weather conditions favorable for ice loss. Unusually strong high pressure over the Arctic led to clear skies and plenty of sunshine. The polar vortex weakened, injecting large amounts of warm air into the Arctic. Sea ice loss doubled to 39% in 2007, according to the <a href="http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/" target="blank" style="outline-style: none; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(70, 33, 154);">National Snow and Ice Data Center</a>. In one year, as much ice was lost as in the previous 28 years combined. In 2011, the <a href="http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/" target="blank" style="outline-style: none; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(70, 33, 154);">University of Bremen</a> reported that sea ice had reached a <a href="http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/09/arctic_sea_ice_drops_to_record.html" target="blank" style="outline-style: none; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(70, 33, 154);">new all-time low on September 8th</a>, and was 27,000 square kilometers below the previous record set in 2007.Extraordinary melting of sea ice in the Arctic in 2012 shattered the all-time low sea ice extent record set in September 2007. The new sea ice record was set on August 26, 2012, a full three weeks before the usual end of the melting season, according to the <a href="http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/" style="outline-style: none; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(70, 33, 154);">National Snow and Ice Data Center</a>. A comprehensive collection <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/" style="outline-style: none; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(70, 33, 154);">of sea ice graphs</a>shows the full story. Satellite records of sea ice extent date back to 1979, though a 2011 study by <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/Arctic-sea-ice-hockey-stick-melt-unprecedented-in-last-1450-years.html" style="outline-style: none; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(70, 33, 154);">Kinnard et al.</a> shows that the Arctic hasn't seen a melt like this for at least 1,450 years (see a more detailed article on this over at<a href="http://skepticalscience.com/record-arctic-sea-ice-melt-to-levels-unseen-in-millennia.html" style="outline-style: none; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(70, 33, 154);">skepticalscience.com</a>.) The record minimum extent of 3.41 million square kilometers is approximately a 50% reduction in the area of Arctic covered by sea ice, compared to the average from 1979 - 2000.These recent low sea ice records have provided new opportunities for the shipping industry, opening both the Northeast and the Northwest Passages in the Arctic Ocean. The Northeast Passage is a shipping route that runs along the northern Russian coast and to the Bering Strait, and is sometimes called the "Northern Sea Route." On the other side of the Arctic Ocean, the Northwest Passage runs along the North American coast through waterways in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. These passages have been elusive since the early 1900s, although climate change has recently freed up both of the typically ice-choked routes. The Northeast Passage opened for the first time in recorded history in 2005, and the Northwest Passage in 2007. For four years in a row, the Northwest Passage was open for ice-free sailing. It now appears that the opening of one or both of these northern passages is the new norm, and business interests are taking note—commercial shipping in the Arctic is on the increase, and there is increasing interest in oil drilling. The great polar explorers of past centuries would be astounded at how the Arctic has changed in the 21st century.When was the last time the Arctic was this ice-free?We can be confident that the Arctic did not see the kind of melting observed in 2012 going back over a century, as we have detailed ice edge records from ships (Walsh and Chapman, 2001). It is very unlikely the Northwest Passage was open between 1497 and 1900, since this spanned a cold period in the northern latitudes known as "The Little Ice Age". Ships periodically attempted the Passage and were foiled during this period. Research by Kinnard et al. (2011) show that the Arctic ice melt in the past few decades is unprecedented for at least the past 1,450 years. We may have to go back to at least 4,000 B.C. to find the last time so little summer ice was present in the Arctic. Funder and Kjaer (2007) found extensive systems of wave generated beach ridges along the North Greenland coast, which suggested the Arctic Ocean was ice-free in the summer for over 1,000 years between 6,000 - 8,500 years ago, when Earth's orbital variations brought more sunlight to the Arctic in summer than at present. Prior to that, the next likely time was during the last inter-glacial period, 120,000 years ago. Arctic temperatures then were 2 -3 °C higher than present-day temperatures, and sea levels were 4 - 6 meters higher.A Manmade Problemtrying to find epicenter of stuck bs, seems to be DC; refers to several incidents in years pas, 2013 on cns seems to have no reason to be there (robo-aggregator?) snce if you read down a few graphs it says ice melting fast and could riase sea level 75 feet?http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/stuck-southern-midsummer-ice-second-icebreaker-turns-back<a href="http://polarocean.co.uk/">http://polarocean.co.uk/</a>rw blogs on stuckness, does well on ggl earch sea ice arctic 7/21/16http://polarocean.co.uk/sea-ice-update/buthttp://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/2016-arctic-sea-ice-wintertime-extent-hits-another-record-low/[gorgeous pix]Every year, the cap of frozen seawater floating on top of the Arctic Ocean and its neighboring seas melts during the spring and summer and grows back in the fall and winter months, reaching its maximum yearly extent between February and April. On March 24, Arctic sea ice extent peaked at 5.607 million square miles (14.52 million square kilometers), a new record low winter maximum extent in the satellite record that started in 1979. It is slightly smaller than the previous record low maximum extent of 5.612 million square miles (14.54 million square kilometers) that occurred last year. The 13 smallest maximum extents on the satellite record have happened in the last 13 years.and <a href="http://gizmodo.com/the-arctic-heat-wave-is-literally-off-the-charts-right-1778868261">http://gizmodo.com/the-arctic-heat-wave-is-literally-off-the-charts-right-1778868261</a><p class="first-text" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So far, 2016 has been <a href="http://gizmodo.com/no-now-this-is-officially-the-hottest-earth-has-ever-b-1763550051#ga=1.268917745.1692697548.1425247164" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit;">a record hot year</a> however you slice it—but the Arctic is on fire. A recently updated graph by the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s <a href="http://cires1.colorado.edu/_{aslater/ARCTIC_TAIR/index_80_t2m.html}" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit;">Andrew Slater shows</a> just how freakishly warm it’s been in what is ostensibly one of the coldest regions of our planet.<div id="js_adsense-container" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="line-height: 32px; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">From the start of the year, degree days below freezing in the Arctic have been at the lowest levels since record keeping began in 1980. In other words, the Arctic is melting, fast and early. As Slate meteorologist Eric Holthaus noted on Twitter, we’re now, quite literally, off the charts:...<div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">economist mag 2012</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.economist.com/node/21556798</div><div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-inside-story-of-shells-push-to-drill-in-the-arctic/</div><div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">yeoman</div><div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Last May, four months before the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell suspended exploration in offshore Alaska, Christopher Putnam needed to get something off his chest.Putnam is 44, originally from Texas, a trained wildlife biologist who also served as an Army infantry sergeant during the Iraq War. For almost six years, he has worked in Alaska for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,protecting marine mammals. It has been his job to ensure that Shell’s plans to drill more than 60 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea — the wild Arctic water between Alaska and Siberia — wouldn’t harm Pacific walruses, particularly the juveniles, calves, and nursing mothers that dominate the Chukchi during the drilling season.Putnam’s relationship with Shell had always been amicable — until the company began insisting that walrus protection should take a backseat to economics and efficiency, and making it clear that it would fight any regulatory speed bumps placed in its way. That kind of determination made Shell a regular caller at the White House: Company president Marvin Odum was a guest there at least six times in the administration’s first two and a half years, and lobbyist Sara Glenn visited even more frequently, according to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/science/earth/shell-arctic-ocean-drilling-stands-to-open-new-oil-frontier.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">a 2012 New York Times article</a>. In light of his “all of the above” strategy to foster energy independence, President Obama obliged by creating a task force to help clear Shell’s path through the bureaucracy, the Times reported.<a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/2014_0416_agendaeventmemorandum.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">Odum met in 2014</a> with then-presidential counselor John Podesta to discuss Chukchi drilling, though the exact details are unknown. The following year, Putnam began noticing leaders within the USFWS’s parent agency, the Department of the Interior, discussing in conference calls how to accommodate Shell’s demands. “Some people were working on various options — how we could interpret our regulations in such a way that were favorable that would allow Shell to do what they wanted to do,” he says. “When there’s discussion about changing the meaning of the regulations specifically to accommodate a company like Shell, then that started to become concerning for me.” By law, rule-making is a public process. “These discussions that were taking place behind the scenes, with no input or public accountability, were getting to the point that I simply wanted to put on the record that I had concerns.”In a <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/putnam_memo.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">May 26 email</a>, Putnam unloaded. “Shell has clearly stated that they think minimizing disturbance to walruses is irrelevant,” he wrote to his then-boss, Mary Colligan, who is now the USFWS’s Alaska assistant regional director. “Shell insists it is not they who must comply with federal regulations, but we who should change the regulations to accommodate Shell.”Putnam then addressed the “voices” within the Interior Department that he says wanted to reinterpret the rules without involving the public. “I think it would be disingenuous, mendacious, and unethical,” he wrote. “Such a course of action may even be illegal.” If Shell were successful at skirting walrus-protection measures, what would come next? Would oil companies quietly try to lift industrial noise limits in the Arctic? Or weaken measures protecting denning polar bears? “Where,” he wrote, “would it end?”After Shell received its approvals and started drilling in July, its first well came up dry, leading the company to withdraw from offshore Alaska “for the foreseeable future.” In its <a href="http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/media/news-and-media-releases/2012/alaska-drilling-update-17092012.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">September pullout announcement</a>, Shell laid some of the blame on the “challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment.”But an Audubon investigation based on government documents — some filed in court and others obtained by Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, through the Freedom of Information Act — points to a regulatory system that, while tougher than before the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, still cut corners and stretched its own capacity in order to accommodate Shell’s drilling timeline. While USFWS scientists fought to protect marine mammals, they did so under crushing time constraints and at the expense of other conservation efforts. Meanwhile, at the Interior agency tasked with approving Shell’s oil leases and exploration plan, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), decision makers authorized overtime, weekend, and holiday work to deliver Shell a speedy decision, while failing to keep pace with climate and ecosystem science.These findings mirror, in part, a <a href="https://www.doioig.gov/sites/doioig.gov/files/WebRedacted_MgmtInterference_Lease193EIS.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">new investigative report</a>, released Dec. 7 by Interior’s Inspector General’s office. It detailed how some BOEM employees considered the agency’s timeline so aggressive that, in the words of one professional, a keyenvironmental analysis was “absolutely compromised” and “full of errors.”These efforts to accommodate a multinational energy company happened under the watch of President Barack Obama, who is reviled, ironically, by drilling advocates and eager to cement his legacy as a climate warrior.Shell declined several requests for interviews for this article. “This story is not relevant anymore,” wrote spokesperson Curtis Smith.In fact, though, the story is just as relevant as ever. In October’s third-quarter earnings call, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden emphasized that while the first foray proved unpromising, “there are of course other potential prospects in our Chukchi leasehold, as well as other areas offshore of Alaska.” And after the current leases expire in four years, there could be more to come. A <a href="http://www.boem.gov/2017-2022-DPP/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">BOEM draft plan</a> calls for new Arctic lease sales starting in 2020. Legislation pending in Congress at press time would require regular sales starting in 2023, even as new science cautions against Arctic drilling. Things might be quiet off the Alaskan coast right now, but that tranquility could very well prove temporary.<div class="mceTemp" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px;">When Shell won the vast majority of the drilling rights in the 2008 Chukchi lease sale — aka Lease Sale 193 — it called its $2.1 billion acquisition a victory for energy independence. “This is an opportunity to develop a proven and prolific basin to supply energy security for North America,” company vice president <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/environment-alaska-oil-chukchi-dc-idUSN0653817820080207#QL3gdqOKEUtIq0BV.97" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">Annell Bay told reporters.</a>Conservationists couldn’t imagine a worse place to drill, a place more fertile, more unspoiled, more vulnerable to climate change. Along with walruses, the Chukchi teems with polar bears, ringed seals, and bowhead and beluga whales. “Coming from the Lower 48, you don’t see areas like this, that are untouched by development,” says Leah Donahey, senior campaign director for the Alaska Wilderness League. Donahey recalls flying over the Chukchi in 2011 and watching thousands of belugas swimming below her. Inland she saw bears running on the tundra, and massive herds of caribou. There were no roads, no infrastructure — “just these small communities and then vast ocean.”Those communities rely on the ocean’s bounty: Subsistence hunting of marine mammals feeds many native Alaskans. “If we don’t have the animals to provide for our nutritional needs, we won’t survive,” says Faith Gemmill, executive director of Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), a grassroots organization. “It’s not just about food security. We’re talking about our entire way of life.” In Iñupiat villages, during traditional whale hunts, she says, “the stories are taught. The values are taught. Knowledge is passed down from the elders to the younger people.”Even before Shell bought its leases, REDOIL and the Alaska Wilderness League joined other groups, including the National Audubon Society, in suing the Bush administration to stop the sale. The <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/point_hope_v_kempthorne-complaint.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">2008 lawsuit</a>, filed by Earthjustice, noted that rising temperatures are already stressing polar bears and walruses. (The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the planet as a whole.) The Interior Department, said the plaintiffs, was selling leases without fully gauging the impacts on climate change, the likelihood of a spill, or the damage to wildlife caused by the deafening air guns used during seismic surveys. Nor, they added, did the government adequately<a href="https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2008/polar-distress" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">consider harm</a> to Steller’s and Spectacled Eiders, both threatened ducks.It was the first of several hard-fought legal cases over drilling in the Chukchi — cases that continue today, outlasting Shell’s pullout announcement.As the litigation meandered through the courts, two disasters gave ammunition to critics of Arctic drilling. First, the <a href="https://www.audubon.org/conservation/gulf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">BP oil spill </a>exposed lethal flaws in the regulatory system. It prompted new safety regulations and President Obama’s dissolution of BOEM’s predecessor, the Minerals Management Service, where staffers infamously<a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/oig_devaney_letter_9-9-08.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">accepted gifts</a> from, and indulged in <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/oig_investigative_report-gregory_smith_8-7-08_0.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">sex and cocaine</a> with, their energy-industry contacts. Second, Shell itself threw the perils of Arctic drilling into focus when it suffered a series of setbacks during its first season of exploration in 2012, culminating in the grounding of the drill ship Kulluk on Sitkalidak Island as it was towed through the Gulf of Alaska during a storm.In January 2014, the Ninth Circuit issued a <a href="http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/Chukchi.Decision44Opinion.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">key decision</a> in Earthjustice’s lease-sale challenge — and highlighted the government’s efforts to help clear Shell’s path. The judges noted that BOEM based its environmental analysis on the “lowest possible amount of oil that was economical to produce.” By estimating just 1 billion barrels, the agency lowballed the possible impacts on habitat, climate, and bird populations. “BOEM considered only the best case scenario for environmental harm,” the court wrote. The decision led BOEM to revise its studies. For the environmental impact statement (EIS) finalized in February 2015, it chose a new and more reasonable estimate of 4.3 billion barrels — and, based on that, calculated a <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/2015-02_final_2nd_supplemental_eis_vol_1_p_156.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">75 percent chance</a> of “one or more large spills” during the 77-year Chukchi production cycle.<a href="http://www.boem.gov/Risk-and-Benefits-in-the-Chukchi-Sea/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">BOEM maintains</a> that such an accident would probably not be “catastrophic” in scale; its “likely” projected large spill from a production platform, based on the median size of similar spills, is 214,200 gallons, or less than 1/600th the volume of the BP disaster. But experts note that cleaning any discharge in the Chukchi would be a formidable, even impossible, task. Unlike the Gulf Coast, the region lacks basic infrastructure: There are no roads connecting villages or even rooms to house cleanup workers. The nearest Coast Guard station is a thousand miles away. There’s little research about how to keep marine mammals away from a spill — and only enough equipment to clean five oiled polar bears at a time. And, perhaps most alarming, there’s no comprehensive method for ridding icy water of oil; most cleanup studies have focused on temperate climates.“We’re talking about killing the environment,” says Robert Bea, a professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California-Berkeley, who spent decades working for Shell and other energy companies. “Just think about an ice slushie with oil, with beluga and bowhead whales swimming around. If you do harm, it’s going to be extensive and it’s going to be long-term.”With delays piling up, Shell was nonetheless resolute about resuming exploratory drilling in 2015. Two months after the Ninth Circuit ruling, in April 2014, company president Odum <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/2014_0402_shell_odum_letter_to_secretary_re_ls_193.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">sent a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell</a>, whose department oversees BOEM. He asked her to “devote the resources necessary to removing, expeditiously, any current regulatory obstacles” that might slow down his company’s plans. Odum encouraged Jewell to “obtain any necessary additional resources to complete the work” on Shell’s schedule, which the company outlined in a one-pager called “Getting to Yes 2015 — Must Have Timeline.”Numerous internal agency emails and memos suggest that BOEM — while not promising Shell a specific outcome — did its Chukchi drilling evaluation at a breakneck pace. “We are keeping to this schedule to allow Shell the opportunity to make a decision about next year’s open water drilling season,” Assistant Interior Secretary Janice Schneider said in August 2014, <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/2014_0903_1745_kendall_strategy_for_ls_193_seis_pp5-6.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">according to an email by</a><a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/2014_0903_1745_kendall_strategy_for_ls_193_seis_pp5-6.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;"> BOEM’s Alaska regional director, James Kendall</a>.The agency drew up its own timetables, filled with various notations. “This schedule includes working overtime and weekends and holidays,” said one footnote. Requests for annual leave, training, and even office visitors would face “critical review.” Environmental analyses would receive “compressed review time.” And the hastened process, noted an agency document, might interfere with other major tasks like developing new air-quality regulations.In August, Kendall sent <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/2014_0903_1745_kendall_strategy_for_ls_193_seis_pp2-3.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">an after-hours email</a> to BOEM deputy director Walter Cruickshank.B2] “Yes, its [sic] Saturday night and I’m in the office. … But I’m not alone, others are here as well,” he wrote. Kendall reported on a conversation with Assistant Secretary Schneider, aboard a government airplane, about the plan for completing the environmental impact study on time. “She … expressed her view (repeatedly) to me of just how absolutely difficult this was, almost bordering on impossible … and that it was obvious that there is absolutely NO WIGGLE room.“Folks are exhausted, blurry eyed, working long hours,” Kendall continued. “There are a number of folks on the floor with me as I type this. Emotions are running high. … Given the fact that folks will now have to run a marathon at a sprinters [sic] pace for some months now, we are working out a strategy for crossing the finish line on time.”Not everyone crossed the finish line. According to the recent Inspector General’s report, Interior knew of at least six BOEM employees who quit or retired early because of the EIS race. One fish biologist said the process was so “crushed” that she didn’t have time to review her own work for consistency or to peer-review others. She retired early, in October 2014, to preserve her own “personal and scientific integrity.” Another biologist said his collaboration with colleagues was limited to 15 to 45 minutes for a 700-page document. A sociocultural specialist said her section on public health was “gutted.”The Inspector General concluded that BOEM officials did not alter scientific findings. But the attorneys at Earthjustice, <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/2015-08-28_alaska_wilderness_league_v_jewell_plaintiffs_opening_brief.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">in a brief filed in U.S. District Court in August 2015</a>, nonetheless identified two fundamental flaws in the EIS that was released in 2015 after the Ninth Circuit decision.First, BOEM decided, because of its fast-tracked schedule, not to place certain sectors of the Chukchi, which scientists had recently identified as ecologically important, off-limits to drilling. Interior had begun its first environmental review a decade ago, when “information about the Chukchi Sea environment, habitat, and marine life was starkly limited,” wrote the lawyers. Since then the research has evolved, particularly about Hanna Shoal, a large, shallow area where the ice persists late into summer. Bowhead whales feed there, and great herds of walruses forage for clams. BOEM itself calls the shoal a “biological oasis,” and last year President Obama protected some of it from future, but not current, lease sales. Yet in its court-ordered update to the EIS, BOEM decided not to consider a new drilling footprint that would exclude Hanna Shoal. The agency said “sufficient protections” exist to safeguard marine mammals. Earthjustice points out in its brief that there’s a big difference between reducing harm and barring drilling from an area altogether.Second, Earthjustice charged that BOEM all but ignored what advances in climate science have revealed about the impact of drilling. It insisted there was “no reliable methodology” to determine how Lease Sale 193 would affect global energy consumption. The EIS didn’t mention, even in its 69-page bibliography, a January 2015 paper from the journal <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7533/full/nature14016.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Nature</a> concluding that “all Arctic resources” must stay in the ground to keep the planet within 2 degrees C of pre-industrial temperatures. “The impact of a single discrete project’s contribution to climate change cannot be covered in more detail due to scientific uncertainty,” the EIS said, adding that recent papers calling for undiscovered hydrocarbons to remain undeveloped “are noted.”Contacted for an interview, BOEM referred questions to the Interior Department, which declined the request without offering a reason. In a short emailed statement, BOEM spokesperson Connie Gillette said her agency conducted a “robust and rigorous” environmental review “consistent with a court-ordered timeline.” In fact, the court did not impose a timeline but rather directed BOEM to develop its own. In the Inspector General’s report, Interior officials acknowledged the rush. They said it wasn’t designed to help Shell but rather to shield the department from “blame” if Shell missed out on drilling in 2015.Former and current Interior staffers say BOEM’s efforts to accommodate Shell are not unusual. “Once you’ve granted a lease, there is internal pressure to propagate the regulatory process,” says Paul Bledsoe, who was an aide to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt during the 1990s and more recently advised President Obama’s national commission on the BP oil spill. “There’s certainly pressure from the industry.” Others say the agencies regulating offshore production tend to draw employees sympathetic to drilling — environmentalists rarely study petroleum engineering. Add to that President Obama’s support for Arctic oil, and his desire not to be seen as stifling production, and the scale ends up being tipped.BOEM, according to those who interact with it, is a more responsible operation than its predecessor, the Minerals Management Service, where former staff scientists say their work was suppressed and where, in 2010, Alaska employees enjoyed a cake decorated with the words “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/science/earth/20alaska.html" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">Drill, Baby, Drill</a>.” Environmental protection is, in fact, written into the agency’s mandate. Still, “science-based” energy management — leasing fossil fuel reserves and approving drilling plans — are at that mandate’s core.“Even though some of the names shifted around, a lot of the culture of the agency remains the same,” says attorney Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a plaintiff in the Earthjustice case. “The deep reforms that a lot of us were hoping to see after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill were in name but not actually in practice.”One of Shell’s hardest-fought battles in the Chukchi was over the rules protecting Alaska’s estimated 129,000 Pacific walruses. According to the USFWS’s Mary Colligan, concentrated industrial activity can cause grave harm to marine mammals, including walruses. “At the extreme, if they avoid an area because the disturbance is so high, and have to feed somewhere else, maybe the prey base isn’t as calorie-rich,” she says. That, in turn, can jeopardize survival or reproduction. Industrial noise can damage hearing and impede vocal communication.</div><div>In 2013, the USFWS developed regulations governing exploratory drilling in the Chukchi. One rule mandated a minimum 15-mile separation between active rigs. That buffer would help reduce the risk of hearing loss among walruses and give them safe passage if they needed to escape. Christopher Putnam, the wildlife biologist and Iraq vet — and Colligan’s colleague — helped craft that rule.Shell fought the 15-mile rule. The Chukchi well sites were tightly clustered within a 300-square-mile prospect, and the company wanted to position its rigs at the two most promising sites — just nine miles apart. It would already be spending the resources for a second rig because, in its exploration plan filed with BOEM, Shell had agreed to have a backup vessel in the vicinity to drill a relief well in the event of a blowout. According to Robert Dillon, a senior adviser to Alaska’s senior senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, Shell didn’t want that rig sitting idle when it could be drilling for oil.However, if the activity would affect certain marine mammals, Shell couldn’t drill until the USFWS issued a letter of authorization. Like their colleagues at BOEM, Fish and Wildlife staffers felt compelled to make their decisions in time for the 2015 drilling season. “We understood how important it was for Shell,” says Colligan. “They certainly communicated that to us very clearly.” Colligan calls this a courtesy the USFWS extends to all drillers because of the complex timing of their operations. “They’ve got ships staging here and there,” she says. “They’ve got decisions they have to make. That’s the environment that we were in.”The company conceded that drilling two wells located within nine miles of each other would flood more of the sea with noise, but pushed to prioritize other considerations. “Various distances may be required between rigs to effectively, efficiently, and economically explore the geological positioning of the oil and gas resources,” said an analysis Shell filed with the USFWS in April 2015. “Spacing of the rigs needs to be determined by these characteristics rather than an attempt to further minimize potential behavioral disturbance of walruses.”With that the oil company put its foot down. “Shell, as part of their 2015 proposed drilling operations, indicates it is not willing to comply with all required mitigation measures,” said <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/mmm_draft_comments_on_shell_loa_supplement_043015.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">a USFWS document</a>. The company’s absolute stance struck Putnam as odd. “It’s not their decision,” he says. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but we’re the federal government.”Shell claimed, in an April 2015 letter to Fish and Wildlife, that a nine-mile separation would have “negligible impact” on the animals. USFWS biologists remained unconvinced. They said Shell had undercounted the walrus population and failed to factor in such disturbances as the Sikorsky S-92 helicopters flying by 40 times a week. “The S-92,” Putnam <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/emails6_p153.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">wrote in an email to an Interior Department lawyer</a>, “is one of the loudest helicopters on earth.”With that much air traffic, Putnam says, a helicopter could startle thousands of animals resting on the ice. “They stampede into water, and you’ve got how many dead or injured walruses.” Chronic stress from loud noise could potentially trigger hormonal changes that threaten population size, he adds.Dealing with Shell’s insistence became a full-time job for Putnam. “I lost half a year,” he says. “Our entire department was almost exclusively focused on that one company, that one issue, for the entire period of time.”Putnam says he was supported by his Alaska colleagues in holding firm to the regulations. “We were reaching up the chain to make sure everyone was aware,” he says. “As you go higher and higher up, people become less and less aware of the details and nuances of the issue.” Hence the conference calls where Interior officials were groping for new interpretations of the rules, he says.He found one call particularly upsetting. An Interior staffer he had never met suggested that the Alaska office was misinterpreting the intent of the mammal-protection rules — rules that Putnam himself had helped author. “It was a little bit offensive,” he says, “for someone who’s never been involved to tell me what I was thinking at the time when I wrote them.”Shell would not be deterred by the USFWS’s scientists. It enlisted Sen. Murkowski, a drilling advocate, whose staff contacted the Interior Department to press the case. “That’s our job: to be the advocates for Alaska,” says Murkowski spokesperson Dillon.Then, in May, Allyson Anderson, associate director of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, <a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/2015_0507_1852_salerno_phone_call_on_wildlife_issue.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">emailed her boss</a> about a phone call with an Alaska colleague. “Shell intends to take the wildlife issue all the way up through the White House via murkowski [sic],” she wrote.Dillon says that, to his knowledge, Murkowski did not take the walrus issue that far. “I believe they [Shell] may have raised it with the White House,” he says — a plausible notion given the company’s past access — adding that that’s how Washington works: “Environmental groups clearly take their case directly to the White House on a regular basis. The right to seek the assistance of one’s government without fear of punishment or reprisals is enshrined in our Constitution.”What eventually preserved the 15-mile mandate in Shell’s drilling authorization, Colligan says, was “procedural”: There was no system for waiving the rule. Fish and Wildlife did promise to “consider making appropriate changes” to the rule through a public process, though that wouldn’t come in time for the 2015 season.In the end, notes Putnam, Interior officials narrowly defined “active” rigs as those actually drilling. As a result, Shell was <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/shell-gains-approval-drill-arctic" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">allowed to locate its rigs</a> nine miles apart as long as they didn’t drill simultaneously. The problem, according to Putnam, is that a non-drilling rig is still staffed and “active”: It requires helicopter support, noisy anchoring operations, icebreakers, and generators. In other words, there were still two industrial operations within nine miles of each other.In a bigger sense, though, the 15-mile rule might have been a deciding factor in Shell’s decision to pull out of offshore Alaska — because the Arctic’s short drilling season ended up limiting the company’s activity to a single well in 2015, and that one was a dud. After seven years of political and legal wrangling, countless raucous grassroots protests, and $7 billion in Arctic investments, Shell’s foray into Lease Sale 193 <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/shell-halts-arctic-drilling" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">halted rather suddenly</a>. Drilling supporters like Lisa Murkowski placed the blame for Shell’s pullout partly on the Obama administration’s “<a href="http://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2015/10/murkowski-interior-attempting-to-shut-down-arctic-development-for-decades" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">destructive pattern of hostility</a>” toward energy production. “We’re seeing decisions out of the Interior that are really destroying our hope to be independent as a state,” Murkowski <a href="https://twitter.com/EnergyGOP/status/656478657943203840" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">said at an October meeting</a> of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which she chairs. She was displeased with Interior’s cancellation of two upcoming Alaska lease sales because of low industry interest, and with its refusal to extend Shell’s current leases.The federal government plans oil and gas lease sales in five-year increments. The next plan, set to be finalized this year, will cover 2017–22. The current draft calls for sales in the Beaufort in 2020 and the Chukchi in 2022. Beyond that, Murkowski’s proposed Offshore Production and Energizing National Security Act of 2015 (<a href="https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/senate_bill_2011.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Senate Bill 2011</a>) would require Interior to sell three Chukchi and three Beaufort leases during every five-year program, starting in fiscal year 2023.But drilling opponents see Shell’s withdrawal as a chance to take a breath and rethink the country’s approach to the Arctic’s energy reserves. They consider it a window of time available to overhaul the regulatory system further to reflect a post-BP world, and to examine whether the industry’s Arctic drilling ambitions should be scaled back or abandoned altogether. “The United States has been myopic for far too long in making decisions about the Arctic,” says Peter Van Tuyn, an Alaska attorney who has represented environmental and native Alaskan groups in challenging drilling. “Why not take the opportunity for the Obama administration to do a big-picture planning effort in the next year?“We have a fresh opportunity,” Van Tuyn continues. “For the first time in the Obama administration’s seven years in office, they do not have to make a decision about the future of the Arctic with some existing weight on the development side of the scale.” The $7 billion that Shell invested to drill a single well made for quite a heavy weight. “Now,” Van Tuyn says, “that scale can be leveled.”Since 1905, <a href="https://www.audubon.org/past-magazine-issues" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; background-color: transparent;">Audubon</a>, America’s leading advocate for conservation — and for birds — has used explanatory and advocacy journalism, as well as stunning original photography,</div><div>=</div></div><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/hillary-clinton-arctic-drilling-not-worth-risk">http://www.alternet.org/environment/hillary-clinton-arctic-drilling-not-worth-risk</a>The Interior Department is considering a plan to allow Shell to drill for oil in the Arctic in 2015 despite the Obama administration’s own analysis showing a 75% chance of a disastrous oil spill if the plan moves forward. The Interior Department’s crucial public comment period ends on December 22, so we need to act fast to keep Shell out of the Arctic.<h4 class="yiv1921097283null" style="line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=9e375ead46&e=06876ede6b" style="line-height: 1.2em; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word; font-weight: normal;">Shell Formally Launches 2015 Arctic Drilling Bid</a> (Fuel Fix)</h4>

To drill or not to drill in a nationally protected arctic wildlife habitat and polar bear breeding ground? That is the question heading to court.

On Friday, the state of Alaska <a href="http://gov.alaska.gov/parnell_media/resources_files/Complaint_031414.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">launched a federal lawsuit</a> against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of the Interior and some of its directors, claiming they wrongfully rejected the state’s application to look for oil and gas on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. According the the lawsuit, the agencies didn’t even consider the plan — an act that “deprived” Alaska of “its right to provide adequate opportunity for the satisfaction of the economic and social needs of the State.”

The <a href="http://www.anwr.org/features/pdfs/ANWR-1002-Area-Oil-%20Gas-Exploration-Plan-Fact-Sheet.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">application</a> rejected by the U.S. government was not for actual drilling. Rather, it was a seven-year seismic program that would have provided a more specific estimate of the oil and gas resources within the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain — commonly referred to as the 1002 Area. That estimate, the lawsuit says, would help “to inform future decisions by Congress” on whether to drill there.

The U.S. government contends that Alaska’s authority to look for oil in the nationally protected area has expired. Alaska contends it has not.

The Arctic Refuge’s oil has been an ongoing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">political controversy</a> <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5007819" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">since 1977</a>, when a British Petroleum geologist named Roger Herrera testified to Congress that he believed there was enormous potential for production. In 2000, the U.S. Energy Information Administration called the area “the largest unexplored, potentially productive geologic onshore basin in the United States.”

Indeed, the area’s oil potential could be enormous. The United States Geological Service<a href="http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/arctic_national_wildlife_refuge/html/analysisdiscussion.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">estimates</a> that anywhere from 5.7 to 16 billion barrels of oil is technically recoverable from the 1002 area. Taken at its mean, that means the 1002 area could produce about one million barrels of oil per day — about 20 percent of America’s daily domestic production, according to the <a href="http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/issues/anwr/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">Institute for Energy Research</a>.

However, there are still uncertainties regarding the importance of the area’s oil. Despite its estimates for production, the EIA has also said that the 1002 area’s oil would probably not have a large impact on world oil prices. “Additional oil production resulting from the opening of the Arctic Refuge would be only a small portion of total world oil production, and would likely be offset in part by somewhat lower production outside the United States,” the agency<a href="http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/anwr/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">said</a>.

There are also myriad environmental issues. Located within the Arctic circle, the 1002 area has no sunlight for 56 days of the year, and temperatures are often as low as below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes it extremely difficult to figure out how to clean up an oil spill if one were to occur, according to the Sierra Club, whose recent <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/arctic/downloads/Chill%20the%20Drills%203-12.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">report</a> on the issue noted that there are no proven technologies to clean up spills in Arctic waters.

“Trying to clean oil out of frigid water, covered in sea ice, in the perpetual darkness of winter would be impossible,” the report reads. “The closest help, a Coast Guard station, is 1,000 miles away.”

In addition, The Arctic Refuge itself is a beacon of wildlife. It is one of only two areas within the National Wildlife Refuge System that are home to all three species of North American bear — black, grizzly, and polar. The 1002 area’s polar bear population is especially important considering its <a href="http://www.nwf.org/wildlife/wildlife-library/mammals/polar-bear.aspx" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">high possibility of global extinction</a> due to climate change — a fact that the Sierra Club noted in its report.

“Burning the fossil fuels found in the Arctic will only accelerate global warming and hasten the disappearance of animals like the polar bear,” the report reads.

A <a href="http://www.fws.gov/alaska/nwr/arctic/pbdenning.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">larger-than-expected</a> number of pregnant females come to the 1002 area every year to dig maternity dens, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The area is the only national conservation area where polar bears regularly den, and is the most consistently-used polar bear land denning area in Alaska. In the 2008 Presidential election, both President Obama and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) expressed <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/mccain-reiterates-opposition-to-drilling-in-wildlife-refuge/?php=true&type=blogs&_r=0" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">opposition </a>to drilling in the pristine area.

Alaska’s Republican Governor Sean Parnell is touting the lawsuit, <a href="http://alaska-native-news.com/the-arctic/10323-state-files-suit-as-a-result-0f-feds-refusal-of-alaska-s-anwr-plan.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">calling it</a> “disappointing and disturbing” that the Obama Administration does not want to look for oil in the polar bear breeding ground. The stance is not unexpected for Parnell, who has <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/governor/Sean_Parnell_Environment.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">expressed a desire</a> to keep the Environmental Protection Agency out of the state, and immediately <a href="http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130307/gov-parnell-must-revive-alaska-climate-change-cabinet" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">disbanded</a> his state’s Climate Change Cabinet upon taking office in 2009.

Parnell — a former ConocoPhillips executive — is <a href="http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130504/neither-democrats-nor-republicans-shocked-parnell-running-again" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: underline;">seeking reelection</a> in 2014.

<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.33em; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; text-indent: 0px;"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/tag/alaska/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 1px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 6px; background-color: rgb(221, 221, 221);">Alaska</a></li>

<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.33em; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; text-indent: 0px;"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/tag/arctic/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 1px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 6px; background-color: rgb(221, 221, 221);">Arctic</a></li>

<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.33em; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; text-indent: 0px;"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/tag/arctic-national-wildlife-refuge/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 1px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 6px; background-color: rgb(221, 221, 221);">Arctic National Wildlife Refuge</a></li>

<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.33em; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; text-indent: 0px;"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/tag/drilling/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 1px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 6px; background-color: rgb(221, 221, 221);">Drilling</a></li>

<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.33em; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; text-indent: 0px;"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/tag/polar-bears/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 1px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 6px; background-color: rgb(221, 221, 221);">Polar Bears</a></li>

<li style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.33em; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; text-indent: 0px;"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/tag/sean-parnell/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 1px 0.5em; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 6px; background-color: rgb(221, 221, 221);">Sean Parnell</a></li>

</ul>

<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.33em; padding: 5px 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline-block; text-indent: 0px;">http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/17/3411491/polar-bear-drilling-alaska/

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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/04/melting-sea-ice-arctic-drilling_n_4725363.html?view=print&comm_ref=false">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/04/melting-sea-ice-arctic-drilling_n_4725363.html?view=print&comm_ref=false</a>

Sea ice melting partly because of human-caused climate change could open previously inaccessible Arctic Ocean waters to expanded oil drilling, but the risks of drilling there will be extremely high.

As <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/arctic-sea-ice-hits-6th-lowest-level-on-record-16492" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer;">sea ice melts in the Arctic</a>, the oil and gas industry has expressed new <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/arctic-off-shore-oil-exploration-could-be-imminent" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">interest in drilling offshore</a> and is expected to invest roughly $100 billion there by 2023, according to <a href="http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Artic%20Report_F2_0.pdf" target="_hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">a new paper</a> from the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington-based think tank. The paper highlights an agreement between ExxonMobil and Russian oil company Rosneft, which have planned to jointly explore for oil in the Kara Sea off the Arctic coast of Siberia.

The paper was discussed in a <a href="http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/search-arctic-energy-publication-launch" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wilson Center webcast</a> — the day before oil giant Royal Dutch Shell <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/shell-4q-earnings-fall-74-percent" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">announced</a> that it would suspend its Alaska offshore operations for 2014 and possibly withdraw from the region entirely.

U.S. Geological Survey <a href="http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1980#.UuvZ83ddXrM" target="_hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">estimates show</a> that the Arctic may harbor 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 13 percent of the Earth’s undiscovered crude oil, which adds up to about 90 billion barrels, according to the paper. Drilling has occurred in the region since 1968, when ARCO and Standard Oil began drilling near Prudhoe Bay at the far northern edge of Alaska.

About 412 billion barrels of undiscovered crude are suspected to be eventually found in the Arctic, about 75 percent of which are in deep water off the coasts of Alaska, Canada, Russia and Greenland, all harboring up to 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. But the paper says developing that crude oil is extremely hazardous because of strong ocean currents, severe storms and floating ice. Seismic oil exploration in those conditions is nearly impossible if the sea ice is too thick.

“Climate change has played an important role” in expanding access to that untapped store of oil and natural gas, according to the paper.

Melting sea ice <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/its-official-arctic-sea-ice-minimum-breaks-record-low-15018" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">opening more of Arctic waters</a> for drilling doesn’t mean drilling for oil there <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/partner-news/arctic-oil-rush-will-ruin-ecosystem-warns-lloyds-of-london" target="hplink" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is a risk-free enterprise</a>. The costs of drilling in hazardous areas have increased since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and only the best-funded international oil companies have the expertise and the resources to operate there, according to the paper.

Government regulators and environmentalists have been forceful with their concern about the hazards of drilling in the Arctic, saying that the costs of cleaning an oil spill in icy conditions and the effect on the Arctic ecosystem would be extreme. Energy companies fear that regulators in North America will place new restrictions on drilling in high-risk places, increasing the costs of operating there.

Since Deepwater Horizon, 10 oil companies paid more than $1 billion for the development of a marine containment system designed to stop well blowouts underwater. Add to that other well drilling safety costs and the pricetag of developing a single Arctic oil well reaching up to $900 million, and energy companies begin to question the viability of developing in the Arctic at all, the paper says.

“There’s only a handful of companies that have the capital to think about it,” said David Biette, director of the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute.

Shell, Chevron and Exxon are among the few companies that can operate in the Arctic, he said.

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<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://link.huffingtonpost.com/4cb49b68b61807701fa21cad1f7c0.7rh/Uurp2-YQlGnDxd4UB5834" style="text-decoration: none; line-height: 1.2em; outline: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Shell To Stop Drilling In Alaska In 2014</a>  1/14 b/c of lawsuit

<a href="http://link.huffingtonpost.com/4cb49b68b61807701fa21cad1f7c0.7rh/Uurp2-YQlGnDxd4UB5834">http://link.huffingtonpost.com/4cb49b68b61807701fa21cad1f7c0.7rh/Uurp2-YQlGnDxd4UB5834</a>

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<a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/todaysnews/20131205/nearly-60-house-democrats-seek-halt-new-oil-leasing-exploration-arctic">http://insideclimatenews.org/todaysnews/20131205/nearly-60-house-democrats-seek-halt-new-oil-leasing-exploration-arctic</a>

House Democrats on Tuesday pressed Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to halt new oil leasing and exploration in the Arctic.

Reps. Rush Holt (N.J.), Lois Capps (Calif.) and David Price (N.C.) spearheaded a letter signed by 59 lawmakers that calls for Jewell to stop new exploration and revamp Interior Department's plans for drilling and permitting.

"Over the past decade, the Department has provided industry ample opportunity to pursue oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean," House Democrats wrote.

"But the industry proposals and government approvals have generated controversy, litigation, and opposition from local communities, Congress, scientists, the conservation community, and many other segments of the American people."

Democrats pointed to the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, which experienced a series of <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/285287-shell-backs-off-arctic-drilling-effort-for-now-announces-pause" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: bold;">mishaps</a> last year while drilling in Arctic waters. The administration is weighing whether to let the company resume its exploration activities.

"Shell’s mishaps, along with the announcements by ConocoPhillips and Statoil that those companies will not pursue exploration drilling in 2014, provide a welcome opportunity for your agency to re-examine whether to allow oil and gas activities in the Arctic and, if so, under what conditions," lawmakers said in the letter.

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not anwr:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Shell Oil cleared one of the last remaining hurdles to Arctic offshore drilling Friday as the federal government said it has approved the company's spill response plan for the Chukchi Sea.

Environmentalists and Alaska Natives living along the Arctic Coast have bitterly opposed drilling. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a prepared statement that the federal government was taking a cautious approach.

"In the Arctic frontier, cautious exploration — under the strongest oversight, safety requirements, and emergency response plans ever established — can help us expand our understanding of the area and its resources, and support our goal of continuing to increase safe and responsible domestic oil and gas production," Salazar said.

The federal government estimates there are 26.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 130 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Arctic Ocean's outer continental shelf reserves. The total includes both the Chukchi Sea, off Alaska's northwest coast, and the Beaufort Sea off the state's north coast.

Shell Oil Co., the U.S. arm of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, hopes to drill up to three wells in the Chukchi during the short open water season this summer and two wells in the Beaufort.

huffpo

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives approved Thursday a bill that would open up parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Rocky Mountains, and the offshore continental shelf for oil and gas exploration. The bill intended to fund a surface transportation package whose fate hangs in the hands of Republican leaders struggling to find more votes from the conservative wing of their own caucus.

2/12

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