Drilling opponents attending a hearing on a petroleum lease sale in the Chukchi Sea capitalized on a new federal report to argue that decision-makers don't yet have the information they need to allow oil and gas drilling in the environmentally sensitive area.
Officials with the Pew Environment Group said the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement should not allow operations in Lease Sale 193 - a huge area off Alaska north and northwest coast - until the agency has filled in key scientific shortcomings raised in the U.S. Geological Survey report.
If the 2008 lease sale is re-affirmed, Shell Oil will move a step forward toward its plans for summer exploratory drilling in the Chukchi, but it would still need to win BOEMRE's approval of specific exploration plans, as well as certain permits, before drilling could begin.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar requested the USGS report.
He's also scheduled to decide, in October, and after the bureau has issued a final environmental impact statement to the public, whether to reaffirm the lease sale that raised nearly $2.7 billion for the federal government.
The sale was successfully challenged in court by environmental and Native groups who said it lacked necessary environmental studies.
The USGS report, released days before the hearing in Anchorage, noted that extensive research has helped decision-makers understand some of the impacts of drilling in Arctic Alaska's outer continental shelf.
But the report noted several "gaps" in the scientific record, including key data that could be plugged into oil spill models - such as ocean currents and basic weather data - to help determine the trajectory a spill. Also missing, among other items, is information about the impact that industrial noise will have on seal, walrus and other animals.
Raychelle Daniel, a Yup'ik from the village of Tuntutliak, where many people still rely on wild fish and meat to live, said BOEMRE should not allow operations in the lease sale until it has evaluated the USGS report and others and produced a clear strategy for acquiring the missing information.
It must also create a comprehensive research and monitoring program to provide data that can help protect ecologically sensitive areas and the subsistence foods that Alaska Native villages rely on, said Daniel, senior associate for Pew's U.S. Arctic Program.
Marilyn Heiman, director of Pew Environment Group's U.S. Arctic program, said the bureau should work with other agencies and groups gathering information about the Arctic, including universities, industry, the USGS and the Coast Guard, to create a one-stop shop for data to help people and communities understand the impact of drilling.
The hearing Wednesday night was dominated by pro-drilling speakers.
They told agency officials that responsible offshore drilling can boost the flow of oil in the endangered pipeline and save Alaska's economy, while producing jobs and reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil.
Curtis Smith, spokesman for Shell in Alaska, said at the hearing that some "professional opposition groups" aren't shooting straight.
He said one environmentalist incorrectly said in a news report that Shell has no oil-spill response equipment for the Arctic. Another said it has no ice-class vessels.
"It was a shock to me," he said.
Shell has spent hundreds of millions of dollars so it can bring unprecedented spill-response capability to the region, including two massive icebreakers, one of which is now being built, he said.
The ice-class vessels cost much more than $100 million apiece, and Shell is going beyond what is expected to prevent, and, if needed, respond to an oil spill, said Susan Childs, with Shell Exploration.
"That is meaningful," she said of the icebreakers' cost. "It is meaningful to spend over 100 million dollars on vessels to make sure we're prepared."
In the 1980s, Shell safely drilled four wells in the Chukchi Sea and 12 in the Beaufort, she said. Now it's planning to bring significantly more resources, including an "Arctic capping system" to shut a well in case of a blowout. It will be a new version of the capping system that was used to stop the Deepwater Horizon gusher last year.
"We have modified that system and it will be in place in Alaska before a Shell drill bit ever touches the sea floor," she said.
"That capping system, combined with our ability to ignite and effectively burn oil slicks, is not actually credited or considered when our oil spill response capabilities are calculated or permitted. Nor is our ability to use and deploy dispersants - despite the fact they have proven quite effective in the Arctic," she said.
Shell has also said in the past it will have other measures in place too, including a second drill rig when operations begin to drill a relief well to stop an oil spill.
Shell's Smith said he's a fourth-generation Alaskan and remembers looking out from the Kenai Peninsula at more than a dozen production platforms operating year-round in Cook Inlet. They survived icy winters in waters that are home to one of North America's most prolific salmon runs. But those success stories are rarely mentioned by drilling opponents.
"Professional opposition groups don't want to acknowledge what's happened in Alaska already in the water because it has gone on wonderfully," he said.
Mae Hank, from the coastal village of Point Hope near the lease sale area and a member of the tribe that joined other groups to stop the lease sale, said her Alaskan roots go back hundreds of generations.
Cook Inlet has strong tides, but the Chukchi Sea has powerful currents that slam together ridges of ice more than three stories tall, she said.
She opposes the lease sale because an oil spill could destroy her culture by killing the whales and other animals that have long fed the village.
"My concern about Lease Sale 193 is it is my family's hunting ground," she said. "If there is an event of an oil spill that would be very devastating because that would eliminate our culture, our traditions and our religious celebrations."
Hunters from her village have spoken in opposition to offshore drilling in the past, but they've been ignored. They hold the most knowledge of the region, but the agency won't listen to them, she said.
"We're the ones that live there. We're the ones that will be impacted," she said.
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