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Shell pushes for deadline on Chukchi SEIS
While Shell has filed a plan proposing exploration drilling in 2012 in the Chukchi Sea, the company has also been asking the U.S. District Court in Alaska to set a deadline for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement to complete a special environmental impact statement for the 2008 Chukchi Sea lease sale in which Shell bought its Chukchi Sea leases.
As a consequence of an appeal against the lease sale, in July 2010 the court ordered that BOEMRE rework certain aspects of the lease sale EIS, with the court banning lease-related exploration activities in the Chukchi until BOEMRE has changed the EIS to the court’s satisfaction. BOEMRE made the necessary EIS changes and published a draft SEIS in October. But in response to concerns raised in public comments on that draft, the agency has voluntarily elected to add a new section to the document, analyzing the potential impacts of a very large oil spill in the Chukchi Sea. The agency now plans to publish a new draft SEIS later in May, with a public review period ending in early July and the final record of decision on the new SEIS likely to come in late October.
Remove uncertainty Shell, needing removal of the legal uncertainty over its Chukchi Sea leases before moving ahead with its drilling operations planned for 2012, has been pressing the court to require BOEMRE to expedite completion of the SEIS. In April District Court Judge Ralph Beistline rejected a request by Shell to set a July 1 deadline for that completion. Beistline, while sympathizing with Shell’s position and commenting that the new oil spill analysis goes beyond what the court had required, said that it is also important that the SEIS is “technically and legally sound” in the wake of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
On May 12 Beistline issued an order supporting a revised deadline request from Shell, requiring BOEMRE to complete the SEIS on or before Sept. 15, 2011. However, both the Department of the Interior and the plaintiffs in the appeal, the Native Village of Point Hope, the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope and 12 environmental organizations, have objected to Shell’s latest request.
Interior says that it is acting as quickly as it can to meet Shell’s needs but that Shell’s proposed deadline would unacceptably truncate the SEIS public notice and comment period, thus jeopardizing the rights of people with interests in the impacts of the lease sale. Moreover, the fallout from prematurely issuing an SEIS that could prove weak in the face of judicial review would present a greater risk to Shell’s plans than the risk presented by BOEMRE’s planned SEIS completion schedule, the agency says.
The plaintiffs told the court that, following legal precedent, the court should defer to BOEMRE’s expertise in determining the length of time that it will take to complete the SEIS. The plaintiffs also objected to a request by Shell that the court should require BOEMRE to issue monthly status reports that include reports on progress in reviewing Shell’s new Beaufort and Chukchi Sea exploration plans. It is premature for BOEMRE to review plans for leases that are themselves “the subject of reconsideration,” the plaintiffs wrote in a May 16 court filing.
A flavor of what BOEMRE may view as a very large Chukchi Sea oil spill in its Chukchi Sea SEIS appeared in an internal BOEMRE memo describing the possibility of a well blowout with an initial oil flow rate of 61,000 barrels per day, leading to an eventual spill size of perhaps 1.4 million barrels. BOEMRE has emphasized that these figures represent a hypothetical maximum discharge scenario for informing regulatory decision makers, rather than an assessment from an actual Chukchi Sea oil prospect.
According to Shell’s recently filed Chukchi Sea exploration plan, in the event of a blowout the worst-case discharge of oil from the wells that the company plans to drill in the Burger prospect could hit a peak flow rate of 23,100 barrels per day, possibly leading to a spill size of 669,479 barrels in a worst-case relief well drilling situation. Shell says that its oil spill response contingency plan accommodates a maximum oil discharge rate of 25,000 barrels per day and a spill size of 750,000 barrels, larger volumes than the company’s worst case estimate for drilling at Burger. However, Shell has said that its planned Chukchi Sea wells would be very straightforward to drill, presenting an extremely low blowout risk.
—Alan Bailey
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