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Appeal dismissedFederal district court dismisses appeal against Chukchi Sea lease sale Alan Bailey Petroleum News
On Feb. 13 federal Judge Ralph Beistline dismissed an appeal in the federal District Court in Alaska against the 2008 Chukchi Sea lease sale in which Shell, ConocoPhillips, Statoil and other companies purchased oil and gas leases. Had the appeal been upheld it would have placed in question the Chukchi Sea leases in which the oil companies plan to conduct exploration drilling. Shell wants to start its Chukchi Sea drilling program this summer.
“This matter is hereby dismissed in its entirety,” Beistline wrote in a court order finally closing the case in the District Court. There remains, however, the possibility that claimants in the case will now appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Appealed in 2008 The appeal dates back to 2008 when the Native Village of Point Hope, the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope and 12 environmental organizations appealed the environmental impact statement, or EIS, for the lease sale. In 2010 Beistline upheld some aspects of the appeal and required the Department of the Interior to rework the EIS. And Beistline placed an injunction on lease related activity in the Chukchi Sea pending publication of both a revised EIS and a new Interior decision on whether the lease sale would stand.
Specifically, Beistline required Interior to document the relevance and importance of environmental data unavailable for the Chukchi Sea environmental analysis, and to include an analysis of the potential impacts of natural gas development in the Chukchi Sea, rather than just considering potential oil development.
Oil spill analysis In the event, following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 Interior went beyond what Beistline had directed and added to the EIS an analysis of the potential impacts of a hypothetical very large oil spill in the Chukchi Sea, as well as addressing the missing environmental data and natural gas development issues.
To address the concerns about the significance of missing information about the Chukchi Sea environment the government analysts identified every statement in the original EIS that acknowledged a lack of environmental information. However, in each case, the analysts determined either that the missing information had no relevance to potentially significant environmental impacts, or that the information was not needed for the EIS decision making.
And in October 2011 BOEM published a final supplementary EIS and a record of decision affirming the lease sale. Beistline subsequently lifted the injunction against lease related activities.
Still deficient? However, the appellees in the case claimed that the supplementary EIS was still deficient, saying that the government had failed to adequately address the concerns about missing environmental data, and also raising concerns about potential greenhouse gas generation from the use of Chukchi Sea oil and gas.
But Beistline has rejected the plaintiffs’ claims, saying that, in publishing the supplementary EIS, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had complied with all applicable laws and had “adequately considered and disclosed the environmental impact of the development of Lease Sale 193 (the 2008 Chukchi Sea lease sale).”
“The decision to approve the sale was certainly not arbitrary or capricious,” Beistline wrote.
The court also agrees with the BOEM view that oil and gas production from the Chukchi Sea will effect U.S. oil and gas supply sources but will not impact the amount of oil and gas used in the country, and will thus have no impact on climate change, Beistline wrote.
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April date for Beaufort Sea oral arguments
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has set an April 2 date for oral arguments in an appeal against Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approval of Shell’s Beaufort Sea exploration plan. Shell plans to drill up to four wells in the Beaufort Sea, starting in 2012, with those wells targeting the Sivulliq and Torpedo prospects on the west side of Camden Bay, to the east of Prudhoe Bay.
BOEM had conditionally approved Shell’s plan in early August but in late September the Native Village of Point Hope and 12 environmental organizations appealed the plan, saying that the agency’s approval decision violated both the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Briefs in the case were filed in January.
—Alan Bailey
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