Posted on 11/21/2008 8:13:15 PM PST by Lorianne
A U.S. appeals court on Thursday blocked Royal Dutch Shell from drilling oil wells off Alaska's North Slope after finding that the Interior Department had failed to conduct an environmental study before issuing the company's drilling permit.
In a long-awaited ruling, the court said that the Minerals Management Service, the U.S. government agency in charge of offshore leasing, had violated the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a "hard look" at the impact that offshore drilling would have on bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea as well as indigenous communities on the North Slope.
The decision canceled Shell's permit to drill at a prospect called Sivulliq, about 16 miles off northern Alaska, and ordered the agency to begin the process from scratch.
"There remain substantial questions as to whether Shell's plan may cause significant harm to the people and wildlife of the Beaufort Sea region," the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, said in its ruling. One judge, Carlos Bea, on the three-judge panel dissented.
Environmental groups, including the Alaska Wilderness League, as well as the North Slope Borough, which represents the indigenous Inupiat people, had sued to stop Shell from drilling, claiming that the company's plans to send icebreakers, drill ships and vessels to conduct seismic surveys might harm bowheads. The whales migrate through the Beaufort Sea twice a year and are the basis of the Inupiat community's subsistence culture.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
Get used to this.
> the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, said in its ruling.
We can always depend on those nincompoops at the Ninth to screw up progress.
Just lovely
Ninth Circus....Go figure.
Welcome to Obama’s “CHANGE”. The Ecowacko’s will literally kill us all!
Thirty years ago G.S. Graber wrote in “The History of the SS” that the environmental movement will be the next home for the Fascist Movement. Obies attitude about global warming has me more worried than most of his other positions.
Tofu, blackouts and bicycles here we come...
Just making sure the sheiks get their full market share.
> the impact that offshore drilling would have on bowhead whales
I say, SPEAR the whales!
Wait until Obama shuts down the coal industry and electric rates skyrocket. Maybe then his brain dead voters might start to not like him so much.
Good, glad to hear it. I’ll be more than happy to pay five dollars a gallon for gas if we can use it to kick the Kenyan out of the White House.
Environmental study? Bugger off!
They're worried the "indigenous" might go to work for $40 bucks an hour.
Why would Shell be wasting money on ice-breakers? Last I heard, the Artic ice had shrunk to a patch the size of a “patio home” housepad and all the polar bears were dying for lack of ice floes from which to assault seals.
Ah yes, bicycling on snowy roads at -10F chomping on my Tofu.
After years of frustration with the actions of so many of our “enlightened” jurists, I’ve come up with a course of action that cost me little and gives me some minor satisfaction. I print five copies of the Constition and five letters and mail (snail mail only) them to federal judges selected at random. The letter asks them to please read the enclosed document and to find a dictionary and look up the words “Judicial” and “Legislative”. I do this every two weeks. I costs me about nine dollars a month, but the satisfaction to my delusional mind is enormous.
I’m sure somewhere there is a dosier with my name on it getting thicker daily, but it sure is easy and fun. Join me if you’d like.
If Hussein keeps his campaign promises you will be paying six dollars a gallon for gas and still have the Kenyan in the White House.
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