The Obama administration issued a new draft analysis outlining the effects of oil and gas leasing in the Chukchi Sea, part of America’s Arctic Ocean. The analysis demonstrates how risky it would be to allow drilling in this remote, irreplaceable and climate-stressed region.
 
Last January, the Ninth Circuit Court declared the Chukchi Lease Sale 193 unlawful, requiring the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to redo the analysis of environmental effects of drilling in the sea and to reconsider whether the region should be open to drilling at all.  This is the second time the massive offshore oil and gas sale, which was rushed through based on poor science and arbitrary economic assumptions, has been sent back by the courts. It was originally held in 2008, sent back the first time by the Alaska District Court in 2010, unsuccessfully defended in 2011 by the Obama administration, and sent back again by the Ninth Circuit Court in January.  

In January, the court found that the previous environmental impact statement for the sale arbitrarily analyzed “only the best case scenario for environmental harm,” severely underestimating the risks of a large oil spill and other effects, if the leases were developed.  The draft supplemental environmental impact statement is the agency’s first step in reconsidering the lease sale per the court’s order.

The draft supplemental EIS released contains a revised prediction of the level of oil industry activities that could occur as a result of the lease sale. Groups have just begun to review the draft, but it shows the effects of leasing in the Chukchi Sea could be catastrophic. For example, under its new analysis, Interior acknowledges that there is a 75 percent chance that one or more large oil spills (more than 1,000 barrels, or 42,000 gallons, of oil) would occur if the leases are developed. There is no way effectively to clean up or contain an oil spill in Arctic Ocean conditions.

Millions of Americans have asked the Obama administration to stop drilling in the Arctic Ocean based on these poor analyses and decisions. Arctic drilling is far too risky—proven by Shell’s disastrous 2012 program that involved near-misses, fires, investigations, pollution violations, and fines, and ended with its drilling rig grounded near Kodiak, Alaska. Scientists from around the world have expressed concern for this vulnerable region—the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, which is wreaking havoc on the unique wildlife and Alaska Native communities that depend on the ocean. Drilling can only make this situation worse, adding insult to injury by risking the most climate-stressed region on Earth to explore for oil that will only fuel further warming.