The US Minerals Management Service has begun an evaluation of the environmental issues associated with future federal Outer Continental Shelf lease sales for oil and gas exploration in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska.
That will really upset environmentalists around the world.
Ahead of any protests, MMS said it will prepare an environmental impact statement focusing on the potential environmental effects of the sales from exploration, development, and production of the area proposed for leasing.
The area to be evaluated for Beaufort Sea Sales 209 and 217, slated for 2009 and 2011 respectively, encompasses 33 million acres, 3 to 205 statute miles off Alaska’s northern coast.
The area for sales proposed for the Chukchi Sea, Sales 212 and Sale 221 slated for 2010 and 2012 respectively, cover 40 million acres 25 to 275 miles off the coast.
Impacts anticipated?
“MMS will continue to work closely with the state of Alaska and local communities throughout the EIS process to ensure the document evaluates the potential impacts of the proposed sales,” said MMS Alaska OCS Regional Director John Goll.
One of those impacts concerns wildlife, as the Chukchi Sea is home to one of two US polar bear populations.
“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.
The directors of two Department of the Interior agencies said they were “confident” oil and gas exploration in the Chukchi Sea can proceed without threatening polar bears.
The officials appeared before a Congressional committee on global warming that is examining why the department is postponing a decision on whether to further protect polar bears even as it is proceeding with the oil lease sales in the Alaska Sea.
Proceed with caution
Other people took issue with their confident views.
If oil and gas development is allowed, said Rep. Edward Markey, the congressional committee chairman, “we will be accelerating the day when the polar bear will be extinct.”
Steven Amstrup, a polar bear expert for the US Geological Survey, DOI’s science arm, said if there is an oil spill, the impact on bears would be grave.
“The polar bears do not do well when they get into oil,” Amstrup told the committee. If bears in the wild get in contact with oil it’s likely to be fatal, he said.
We will not speculate here how the bears will fare in the debate. It is perhaps enough to note that a protest has been registered and that it will begin to resound around the world.
Who, after all, could imagine a world without snowy white polar bears? Very clearly, international oil companies will have to proceed with caution on this issue.
