Parties agree to close Apache IHA case

The parties to a legal case questioning a federal authorization issued to Apache Alaska Corp. for a recent Cook Inlet seismic program have asked the court to close the case.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the State of Alaska and coalition of environmental groups collectively determined that a May 28 ruling effectively resolved all the outstanding issues.

In the ruling, District Court Judge Sharon Gleason partially upheld an appeal of an incidental harassment authorization that the NMFS issued to Apache for its work in Cook Inlet last year. The Native Village of Chickaloon, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Water Advocacy claimed that the authorization failed to follow federal environmental law in numerous ways.

Specifically, Gleason upheld the plaintiffs’ charge that the federal agencies had failed to accurately estimate the density of the Beluga whale population in the vicinity of the proposed seismic work because they failed to consider the whales swimming below the surface and those missed by human error. But because the IHA under appeal expired earlier this year, when the NMFS issued an amended IHA for the work Apache plans to conduct this year, Gleason required the parties to offer ideas for what to do next.

Because the existing legal disputes in the matter no longer concern the new IHA, all the parties to the case suggested making the summary judgment final and closing the case.

—Eric Lidji