Chukchi Lease Sale Goes Forward; Still No Polar Bear Decision from FWS
Despite opposition from environmental organizations and Democrats in Congress, the Minerals Management Service is proceeding with its scheduled sale of offshore drilling leases in the Chukchi Sea at 9 AM Alaska time (1 PM EST). FWS chief Dale Hall failed to make the February 6 deadline despite his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last week that he was “pushing to get there.”
A Los Angeles Times op-ed penned last weekend by MMS director Randall Luthi, The Bear Necessities, defends the lease sale, claiming that “under the Marine Mammals Protection Act, the bear currently receives regulatory protections even stricter than those available under the Endangered Species Act.” This statement ignores the critical habitat provisions of the ESA which could prevent such actions as the lease sale.
Last week MMS officials sent a cease-and-desist order to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who earlier published “a series of internal e-mails from current and former Interior scientists raising troubling questions about how badly environmental assessments of Arctic offshore oil development were skewed.”
The Alaska Wilderness League plans to live-blog the sale.
Update The sale has been completed, the 488 blocks selling for a total of over $2.6 billion.
Estimated reserves include 77 trillion cubic feet of conventionally recoverable natural gas (worth about $635 billion at $8/MMBtU) and 15 billion barrels of oil ($1.5 trillion at $100/barrel).
The winning bidders:- Shell (Netherlands, $2.1 billion)
- ConocoPhilips (US, $506 million)
- Repsol (Spain, $14.4 million)
- Eni (Italy, $8.9 million)
- StatoilHydro (Norway, $14.4 million – most Statoil & Eni bids were joint bids)
As StatoilHydro noted in its press release, “The area is considered a frontier area with no production or infrastructure as of today.”