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Shell cannot drill off Alaska

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday blocked Royal Dutch Shell from drilling oil wells off Alaska’s North Slope after finding that the Interior Department had failed to conduct an environmental study before issuing the company’s drilling permit.

In a long-awaited ruling, the court said that the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency in charge of offshore leasing, had violated the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a “hard look” at the impact that offshore drilling would have on bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea as well as indigenous communities on the North Slope.

The decision cancelled Shell’s permit to drill at a prospect called Sivulliq off northern Alaska, and ordered the agency to begin the process from scratch.

“There remain substantial questions as to whether Shell’s plan may cause significant harm to the people and wildlife of the Beaufort Sea region,” the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco, said in its ruling. One judge, Carlos T. Bea, on the three-judge panel dissented.

Environmental groups, including the Alaska Wilderness League, as well as the North Slope Borough, which represents the indigenous Inupiat people, had sued to stop Shell from drilling, claiming that the company’s plans to send icebreakers, drill ships and vessels to conduct seismic surveys might harm bowheads. — New York Times News Service

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