Posted on 01/03/2008 2:50:46 PM PST by NormsRevenge
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The federal government will open up nearly 46,000 square miles off Alaska's northwest coast to petroleum leases next month, a decision condemned by enviromental groups that contend the industrial activity will harm northern marine mammals.
The Minerals Management Agency planned the sale in the Chukchi Sea without taking into account changes in the Arctic brought on by global warming and proposed insufficient protections for polar bears, walrus, whales and other species that could be harmed by drilling rigs or spills, according to the groups.
The lease sale in an area slightly smaller than the state of Pennsylvania was planned without information as basic as the polar bear and walrus populations, said Pamela A. Miller, Arctic coordinator with Northern Alaska Environmental Center. The lease sale is among the largest acreage offered in the Alaska region.
"The Minerals Management Service is required to have preleasing baseline data sufficient to determine the post-leasing impacts of the oil and gas activities that will occur," Miller said. "They simply do not have that."
The MMS announced it would hold a lease sale Feb. 6 in Anchorage for the ocean floor on the outer continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea, the body of water that begins north of the Bering Strait and stretches between northwest Alaska and the northern coast of the Russian Far East.
The MMS is a branch of the Interior Department. Its stated mission is to manage ocean energy and mineral resources on the outer continental shelf and federal and Indian mineral revenues to enhance public and trust benefits, promote responsible use, and realize fair value.
It would be the first federal OCS oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea since 1991. The agency estimates it contains 15 billion barrels of conventionally recoverable oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of conventionally recoverable natural gas.
MMS director Randall Luthi said the agency took steps to protect wildlife.
"MMS funds a robust environmental studies program to monitor the effects of industry activity in the OCS, including more than 40 ongoing Arctic-specific studies," said Luthi. "Following up on a workshop attended by over 100 scientists and stakeholders, we are inaugurating a new suite of research for the Chukchi Sea to further monitor marine mammals, other communities, hydrocarbons, and subsistence uses."
The sale is backed by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and community and tribal leaders, he said.
"We believe our decision is a good balance, and will allow companies to explore this intriguing frontier area while still protecting the resources important to the coastal residents," Luthi said.
Miller and Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity said the MMS ignored dangers to animals and birds if an oil spill were to occur.
"No one yet has figured out how to clean up a spill in broken ice, so they just stick their head in the sand and pretend it won't happen," Cummings said.
He also said the agency's environmental assessment ignored changes brought by global warming.
The Chukchi Sea, he said, is the nation's most important habitat for Pacific walrus. The lease sale assumes a stable walrus population, ignoring developments of 2007. Unlike seals, walruses cannot swim indefinitely and must "haul out" on ice or land to rest. In late summer, thousands of animals hauled out on the northwest Alaska coast for several months because their usual platform for foraging, sea ice, receded far beyond the relatively shallow continental shelf over waters too deep for walrus to dive for food.
On the Russian side of the Chukchi Sea, biologists recorded herds gathering on shore instead of the pack ice, including one group of up to 40,000 animals at Point Shmidt, a spot that had not been used by walruses as a haulout for a century. Russian biologists estimate that 3,000 to 4,000 mostly young animals were crushed in stampedes when polar bears, hunters or low-flying aircraft startled walruses and sent them rushing to the safety of the sea.
"It doesn't address the reality that things are happening rapidly with walrus and we need to be very, very careful in what we do," Cummings said of the lease plan.
The Chukchi Sea also is home to one of two U.S. polar bear populations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is days away from deciding whether polar bears should be declared threatened because of global warming and its effect on the animal's primary habitat, sea ice.
"The chances for the continued survival of this icon of the Arctic will be greatly diminished if its last remaining critical habitat is turned into a vast oil and gas field," said Margaret Williams, managing director of World Wildlife Fund's Kamchatka and Bering Sea Program.
Polar bears spend most of their lives on sea ice. They use sea ice to hunt their primary prey, ringed seals. In Alaska, females use sea ice to den or to reach denning areas on land.
Arctic sea ice last summer plummeted to the lowest levels since satellite measurements began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.
The sale area will not include nearshore waters ranging from about 25 to 50 miles from the coast, Luthi said. That nearshore buffer is used by bowhead and beluga whales, other marine mammals, and marine birds migrating north in the spring, Luthi said, as well as subsistence hunters from coastal villages.
Cummings said the agency used inadequate standards for assessing the effect of sound from exploration seismic and drilling activity. It also failed to take into account recent sightings of endangered fin and humpback whales in the Chukchi Sea, he said.
"The buffer may put activities out of sight from land but it certainly doesn't shield the land from an oil spill," he said.
It would be the first federal OCS oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea since 1991. The agency estimates it contains 15 billion barrels of conventionally recoverable oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of conventionally recoverable natural gas.
Can’t we just trade our environmentalists to China for more lead-painted toys?
“... a decision condemned by enviromental groups ..”
and they will pack planes and suv’s going around to complain about it
Since there is no more sea ice due to global warming, couldn’t these platforms actually benefit polar bears?
Ah, elk will due, birds will go extinct, it won’t rain the Mojave desert, and Windows will crash. Oops, that last one will happen no matter what. These clowns are so, so predictable. Sooner or later, well hear from one who has an actual education.
She must be a burkha wearing Mohammeda (Mohammedette?), at least a wanna be, otherwise she’d likely be in favor of just a little energy independence.
Just a note for all the environmentalist who are going to visit this site.
The size of the current footprint Pruden Bay can be best represented by the following example..
Putin Bay area in if equal to a postage stamp would be represented on a football field as the size of a postage stamp.
In fact the Cariboo and the reindeer gravitate to the oh pipeline in the wintertime because of the warmth given off by the pipeline. Sounds like a benefit to me.
We heard the same arguments from these people prior to the Alaskan pipeline, which, overall, hasn't been that bad to the environment. So, how about this idea: Let these environmental groups have their way, but they have to pay $5 billion/month to oil consumers to offset rising oil prices. That way, they get what they want (provided they will put their money where their mouth is) and the person using oil get's what they want...a win-win.
It’s a start. When they resume selling leases off Florida, North Carolina, Texas and California then I’ll know they’re serious.
Who would propose insufficient protections or is this another blind assertion learned from Planned Parenthood. These scoundrels are losing their power of twisting language since they have inflated meaning to the point where they really don't know what they are saying.
Might be amusing if they take their planes and SUVs to the actual drill sites. Or try anyway.
Environmental groups are starting to sound shrill to me (and tedious and repetitious). The environmentalists said that Alaska was destroyed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. That never happened. Fishing was better than ever in the aftermath. It is time for adult supervision in our government. We are quite capable of responsible environmentalism without "help" from Marxists.
Can't we just give them to China and be done with it?
It must be good for America then.
Just a thought, here...but, if global warming is already cutting the natural ice flows and hard scape required by the polar bears and the walrus herds, why can’t the oil companies build some really neat floating or tethered platforms for them? Certainly, if they can build those huge oil platforms, they can put together something for the critters to use. Might want to paint them white, just to fool ‘em, maybe...
In all seriousness, why do we give a tinker’s damn what this environut pinhead claims? The simple fact is that this is a chance to help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil. That’s a good thing; a very good thing.
During some months of WW II hundreds of oil tankers and ships with lots of bunker fuel were sunk in both Atlantic and Pacific. Any permanent eco-damage?
And it will probably go something like ..
Well .. if you just hold off on the drilling, the earth will return back to it's ... er .... oops"
And you stick you head in a less savory place, and pretend you know that it all; butt mistake your own natural gas reek as that of a drilling accident.
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