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Court rejects Arctic moratorium lawsuit
The U.S. District Court for Alaska has rejected a lawsuit by the State of Alaska, claiming that the U.S. Department of the Interior has illegally imposed a drilling moratorium on the Alaska Arctic outer continental shelf. The state claimed that public statements about an Arctic moratorium made by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, coupled with the postponement of Shell’s planned drilling in the Chukchi Sea in 2010, demonstrated that Interior had imposed a moratorium without using a public process, as required by the U.S. Administrative Procedures Act.
Interior has said that it has never imposed an Arctic moratorium, that it is processing a Shell application to drill in the Beaufort Sea in 2011 and that Shell voluntarily withdrew its 2010 Chukchi Sea drilling plan.
Court order In a Jan. 24 court order, Judge Ralph Beistline said that a court ruling of the type that the state has requested is “an extraordinary remedy,” only to be used in very specific circumstances. Salazar’s statements “though troublesome to the state” do not reflect the official position of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement; BOEMRE’s actions do not suggest that there is a moratorium in place; and there is no formal agency action that the court can review, Beistline wrote.
“Although the court recognizes the catch-22 that the state perceives itself to be in at this point, the bottom line is that the court cannot review a decision that is not final under the Administrative Procedures Act, nor can the court order the secretary to perform a discretionary act in order to create a final, reviewable decision,” Beistline wrote.
But the court agrees that resource development is of vital importance to Alaska and that decisions regarding resource development should be made openly and clearly, with ample opportunity for interested parties comment, he wrote.
—Alan Bailey
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