Some of the most influential environmental groups launched an eleventh-hour challenge Wednesday to halt the next frontier in offshore drilling — the July start of Shell Offshore’s plan to drill three exploration wells in the Arctic.
A coalition that includes the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council appealed to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to suspend the drilling plan at least until a cause can be determined for the disastrous blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
They warned that the challenges of coping with an oil- rig blowout in remote Arctic waters “would far surpass” those related to BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion, which is estimated to be gushing oil into the gulf at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day. They said Shell’s emergency plans are weak and that there is a lack of sufficient support crews and emergency equipment to respond quickly to a significant oil spill.
Shell Offshore has long planned to drill three exploration wells this summer up to 72 miles offshore in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, a region of turbulent waters, heavy fog and shifting ice hundreds of miles from deep-water ports. The nearest U.S. Coast Guard base is nearly 1,000 miles away. Shell paid $2.1 billion for its Chukchi lease in 2008.
After years of litigation, Shell has secured the majority of its drilling permits, but Interior Department officials have stressed the operation is still subject to review. Salazar on Wednesday called the Deepwater Horizon accident “a lesson we need to learn from.”
Moving into the offshore Arctic, believed to hold the largest untapped gas reserves, is a critical component of several successive administrations’ determination to lower America’s dependence on foreign energy supplies.
Unlike the Gulf of Mexico, where offshore drilling is easily accessible to the massive oil-industry infrastructure along the coast, the Arctic is a remote region where cleanup crews may be hampered by bone-chilling cold, constant darkness, 20- foot waves, clouds too low to launch aircraft and waters too shallow to bring in large ships.
So concerned is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that it advised the federal Minerals Management Service last year to hold off on further oil and gas development off the coast of Alaska until more research is done on oil-spill risks.
Shell says a blowout of the kind that occurred at the Deepwater Horizon rig would be highly unlikely in Alaska, in part because Arctic operations would be in shallower water — 150 feet, instead of 5,000 feet — and at far lower well pressure.
Meanwhile, two congressmen raised concerns about BP PLC’s operations on Alaska’s North Slope months before the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the gulf, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Reps. Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak cited at least four “significant” incidents in Alaska in 2008 and 2009, including a pressure-valve problem they said could have caused an explosion.
In a January letter to the president of BP Exploration Alaska, the congressmen referred to “a number of personnel incidents involving serious injury or death” and questioned whether proposed BP budget cuts might threaten the ability to maintain safe operations.
