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Court Denies Offshore Oil Lease Sale in America’s Arctic
Lease Sale 193 in the Chukchi Sea remanded by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
JANUARY 22, 2014
ANCHORAGE, AK — Today, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Department of the Interior violated the law
when it sold offshore oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea off the
coast of Alaska. The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by a coalition
of Alaska Native and conservation groups represented by Earthjustice.
“The
Obama administration now has the chance to do right by the Arctic and
the planet by keeping oil drilling out of the Chukchi Sea. It makes no
sense to open up the fragile, irreplaceable, and already melting Arctic
Ocean to risky drilling for dirty oil that will only exacerbate climate
change already wreaking havoc on the Arctic and elsewhere,” said Erik
Grafe, an attorney at Earthjustice, which represents the groups.
In response to the decision, the organizations issued the following joint statement:
“Today’s
ruling is a victory for the Arctic Ocean. The government has no
business offering oil companies leases in the Chukchi Sea. The area is
home to iconic species such as polar bear, bowhead whales, and walrus
and to a vibrant indigenous subsistence culture. Drilling for oil puts
at risk the region’s wildlife and people, and it takes us off the path
toward a clean energy future.
“For
the second time, a court has found that the government ignored basic
legal protections for our ocean resources in deciding to open the
Chukchi Sea to offshore oil leasing. The Obama administration must now
take seriously its obligation to re-think whether to allow risky
industrial activities in the Chukchi Sea. As Shell’s problems have
clearly demonstrated, companies are not ready to drill in the Arctic
Ocean.”
Background:
The
Chukchi Sea is part of America’s Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. It is
home to iconic species such as polar bears, walrus, beluga whales,
bowhead whales, and seals. It is also home to vibrant Alaska Native
communities that have depended for millennia on the ocean for their
subsistence way of life. The region is warming at twice the rate of the
rest of the world, putting tremendous strain on its wildlife and people.
There is currently no oil and gas development in the Chukchi Sea. The
Chukchi Sea and its coast are remote—the coast contains only four small
communities that are not connected to a road system, lack deep-water
harbors, and can only be reached by plane or, in summer, by boat. The
region is hundreds of miles from the nearest coast-guard station and
lacks rescue and oil spill response capacity.
The
Chukchi Sea lease sale, Sale 193, was originally held in 2008 by the
Bush administration. It offered nearly 30 million acres in the Chukchi
Sea for oil drilling—an area larger than the size of Pennsylvania. Prior
to the lease sale, there were no active oil leases in the sea. In 2010
The Federal District Court in Alaska determined that the original lease
sale violated the National Environmental Protection Act, one of the
foundations of U.S. environmental law, because the Department of
Interior had failed to address the widely recognized gaps in what is
known about nearly every species in the Chukchi Sea. It required the
agency to reconsider the decision. In October 2011, the Obama
administration also decided to reaffirm the lease sale, despite the
acknowledged gaps in information. The District Court upheld the Obama
administration’s affirmation of the lease sale. The appeal decided today
followed.
The
Court today agreed with the groups that the Department of Interior
failed adequately to analyze the potentially dramatic environmental
effects of the sale before offering the leases. It determined that the
agency had analyzed “only the best case scenario for environmental harm,
assuming oil development,” and that this analysis “skews the data
toward fewer environmental impacts, and thus impedes a full and fair
discussion of the potential effects of the project.” The agency will
have to revise or supplement its analysis for the lease sale once again
and must reconsider its lease sale decision.
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