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Groups appeal new Chukchi Sea SEIS In continuing challenge to 2008 lease sale, groups say that BOEM’s new SEIS still does not meet NEPA statutory requirements Alan Bailey Petroleum News
In a somewhat predictable move, the groups who have appealed the validity of the Department of the Interior’s 2008 Chukchi Sea oil and gas lease sale have complained to the U.S. District Court in Alaska that a new supplementary environmental impact statement issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for the sale falls short of meeting the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act. On Nov. 16 the groups, consisting of the Native Village of Point Hope, the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope and 12 environmental organizations, asked the court to declare invalid a BOEM record of decision affirming the lease sale and to reinstate a ban on Chukchi Sea lease related activities.
Shell wants to drill in 2012 in Chukchi Sea leases that it purchased in the 2008 sale.
2010 court ruling The groups originally appealed the lease sale in 2008 and in July 2010 District Court Judge Ralph Beistline upheld two of the complaints against the sale, saying that the environmental impact statement, or EIS, for the sale was deficient in that it had not considered the potential impacts of Chukchi Sea natural gas development; and that it should also have evaluated the significance of missing Chukchi Sea environmental data. The EIS should also have assessed the practicalities of obtaining that missing data, Beistline said. Beistline remanded the EIS back to the Department of the Interior for rework and meantime placed an injunction on Chukchi Sea lease related activities.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the predecessor agency to BOEM, proceeded to develop a new supplementary EIS, taking into account the court ruling but also adding a new section assessing the potential impacts of a very large oil spill in the Chukchi Sea. After the necessary public review periods, on Oct. 3 BOEM published its new lease sale SEIS, along with a new record of decision upholding the lease sale. The court subsequently lifted its injunction.
New complaints But the groups that appealed the original EIS now say that in the new SEIS BOEM, in tackling the missing data issue, has done little more than list missing environmental information and state that none of the missing information is essential to making a decision about holding the lease sale. BOEM has not made clear exactly what information is needed to make a lease sale decision, and in the absence of some critical information the agency cannot make informed choices between lease sale alternatives, the plaintiffs say.
And in a new twist in the appeal, the plaintiffs now claim that, by not considering the greenhouse gases generated from the future burning of oil and gas produced from Chukchi Sea leases, BOEM has failed to adequately consider the lease sale’s environmental impacts. Despite BOEM’s claim that it cannot reasonably foresee the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions from the future use of Chukchi Sea oil and gas, the SEIS contains estimates of oil and gas volumes that might be produced from Chukchi Sea leases — there are recognized ways of converting oil and gas volumes into greenhouse gas volumes, if the oil and gas is used as fuel, the plaintiffs claim.
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