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EAB rejects Kulluk air permit appeals Appeals Board denies review of air quality permit for Shell’s Beaufort Sea floating drilling platform and associated fleet Alan Bailey Petroleum News
The Environmental Appeals Board, or EAB, has rejected appeals against the Environmental Protection Agency’s air quality permit for Shell’s use of its Kulluk floating drilling platform for exploratory drilling in the Alaska Beaufort Sea, starting this summer. The board denied review of the permit, dismissing all of the issues raised in claims that the EPA had improperly issued the permit.
The decision by the EAB, the panel of judges with final authority over decisions made by the Environmental Protection Agency, came in response to three appeals against the Kulluk permit. One appeal came from a group of nine environmental organizations, one came from the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope and a third came from a private individual.
In an order issued March 30 the EAB said that the petitioners against the air permit had failed to show that the agency erred in issuing the permit.
The rejection of the appeal represents a significant step forward for Shell in its multiyear effort to start its planned Alaska Arctic offshore drilling program.
“Achieving a usable air permit for the Kulluk means Shell has, for the first time, all of the air permits needed to work in the Alaska offshore,” said Shell spokesman Curtis Smith in a March 30 press release. “That the Environmental Appeals Board already rejected challenges to air permits for Shell’s second drill ship, the Noble Discoverer, further validates the work Shell and EPA have done to assemble strong, environmentally responsible emissions programs.”
Other appeals In January the EAB rejected appeals against air quality permits for Shell’s use of the drillship Noble Discoverer in the Chukchi Sea or Beaufort Sea. Those permits were subsequently appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit — the 9th Circuit court has yet to rule in that appeal. The same court is also reviewing appeals against the approvals by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management of Shell’s Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea exploration plans.
According to the EAB order denying review of the Kulluk air permit, the petitioners against the permit raised seven issues, including questions over the way in which EPA had placed limits on the total emissions from the Kulluk and its support fleet; the exemption of a 500-meter zone around the Kulluk from ambient air standards; and the use of overlapping public comment periods for two different permits, including the Kulluk permit.
The board dismissed one issue, a question over Shell’s ambient air quality analysis, because the petitioners had failed to raise this issue during the public comment period for the permit. And the board rejected all of the other issues because, the board said, the petitioners had failed to meet “their burden of demonstrating that (permit) review is warranted on any of the grounds presented.”
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