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North Slope groups file appeal Borough, Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope appeal MMS’ approval of Shell’s Beaufort exploration plan to Interior’s Board of Land Appeals Alan Bailey Petroleum News
The North Slope Borough, the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope have jointly appealed to the Department of the Interior’s Board of Land Appeals against the U.S. Minerals Management Service’s February decision to approve Shell Offshore’s Beaufort Sea exploration plan. That plan envisages the drilling of three wells at the Sivulliq prospect, on the west side of Camden Bay, using two drillships, as well as site survey work and some geotechnical boring.
In addition to the work done under its Beaufort Sea exploration plan, Shell hopes to carry out some seismic surveys in the Beaufort Sea during the summer 2007 open water season.
EIS required The North Slope groups appealing the MMS decision say that MMS should require a full-scale environmental impact statement for the proposed exploration activities.
“Instead, MMS settled for an abbreviated impact assessment and concluded that Shell’s exploration plan would have no significant impacts — even though MMS acknowledged it lacked sufficient data to reach that conclusion for some wildlife species,” the groups said.
Under the terms of the National Environmental Policy Act a finding of significant environmental impact triggers the need for an environmental impact statement.
A prime concern of the North Slope group is the potential impact of offshore exploration activities on subsistence hunting, particularly as a result of potential deflection of the migration routes of bowhead whales.
“The proposed exploration activities involve extensive drilling operations (involving multiple icebreakers, drilling platforms and aerial support) within the Beaufort Sea,” the filed appeal petition says. “These activities threaten to inflict significant and irreparable damage upon these subsistence resources and the communities they support without an adequate consideration of the environmental impacts. … Appellants have relied upon the harvest of bowhead whales for thousands of years for their subsistence way of life.”
The petition also says that MMS failed to consider or disclose the impact of the industrial activities on caribou under the flight paths of aerial vehicles. MMS admitted to potential significant impacts on fish used as a subsistence resource, but the agency failed to prepare an EIS to quantify those impacts, the petition says.
Conservation group appeal The Associated Press recently reported that a coalition of Native American and conservation groups has also filed an appeal with the Board of Land Appeals against Shell’s Beaufort Sea plan. The coalition consists of Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (or REDOIL); the Center for Biological Diversity; and the Sierra Club.
Apparently that appeal says that MMS did not allow adequate time for public comment on its environmental review or consider the potential effects from a crude-oil spill during exploration.
However, the Board of Land Appeals told Petroleum News April 19 that it has not received any appeals relating to Shell’s Beaufort Sea plans. Under an obscure provision of the U.S. code, an appeal of this type that relates to the Alaska outer continental shelf needs to be made to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, not the Board of Land Appeals, a board representative said.
As this issue goes to press, Petroleum News has been unable to track down any Beaufort Sea filings with the Ninth Circuit court.
Shell’s mitigation measures In a February interview with Petroleum News, Rick Fox, Shell’s asset manager for Alaska, described some of the environmental mitigation measures that Shell plans in association with its Beaufort Sea activities.
Those measures include the deployment of passive acoustic arrays at intervals out from the coast, the use of about 70 locally recruited marine mammal observers, use of aerial wildlife monitoring and the operation of communications centers, manned by local residents, in all North Slope villages. The company has also commissioned a new oil spill response vessel to support its Beaufort Sea operations.
“The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and Shell and various other parties during the season will be talking every day,” Fox said. “… We’re committed to good communications and constant dialogue with the people representing the whaling captains and with the agencies. … We’ll be adjusting and adapting all the time. … If communications are there you can work through a lot.”
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