Group campaigns against Shell drilling

Headed by the Alaska Wilderness League and claiming to “represent millions of Americans across the country,” 19 environmental organizations have joined forces to form a pressure group opposing Shell’s plans to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in 2012. The group, called “United for America’s Arctic,” has launched a yearlong campaign to pressure the Obama administration into prohibiting Shell’s planned drilling.

In a July 11 release the group said that it will use the media and grassroots campaigning to “raise awareness about our imperiled Arctic waters and the wildlife and the people who depend on them.” And the group anticipates its campaign culminating on July 4, 2012, with a “celebration of America’s Arctic Ocean’s ‘independence’ from drilling.” Shell plans to move its Alaska Arctic drilling fleet into operation in early July.

“The Obama administration is currently considering plans from Shell to drill 10 wells in the Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, despite the fact that there is a lack of comprehensive science about the Arctic and no effective way to clean up a spill in the Arctic’s ice conditions, as reiterated recently by the U.S. Geological Survey,” the release says. The release also says that Shell operates an oil rig with an especially poor record of oil spills in the northern North Sea.

The group’s founding statement says that the Arctic Ocean and its coasts are “unique and important.”

“For thousands of years America’s Arctic has been home to vibrant communities that depend on healthy, functioning ecosystems to support their subsistence way of life. The Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas provide vital habitat for many of our nation’s most iconic wildlife species — polar bears, walrus, ice seals, bowhead whales, beluga whales, eiders and more,” the statement says.

—Alan Bailey