Alaska: USA approve Shell drilling project in the Arctic – ZEIT ONLINE

Despite strong protests from conservationists Shell may drill in the Arctic for oil. A US agency gave permission, after the company had complies.

18th August 2015 21:06 clock

Greenpeace activists protest in Zurich with a banner against the oil company Shell. | © Arnd Wiegmann / Reuters

The Arctic Project of energy giant Royal Dutch Shell has received the final approval from the United States, despite fierce opposition from environmentalists. After intensive testing we’ve allowed Shell to drill in compliance with rigorous security off the coast of Alaska for oil, the competent authority Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said. The activities would be monitored around the clock. US environmentalists reacted in horror. They fear irreversible damage to the fragile ecosystem of the Arctic.

The Anglo-Dutch company wants in the Chukchi Sea – drilling in relatively shallow water – 113 km away from the village of Wainwright on the north west coast of Alaska.

According to estimates by the US Energy Information Agency EIA about 22 per cent of global undiscovered oil and gas reserves could in the affected region are. The mineral resources are hotly contested by the Arctic states United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark (Greenland) and Norway.

Shell had been trying for years to the approval and already made initial drilling 2012 Design. In September of the same year the group was, however, forced to postpone the project because of problems with an icebreaker. In May 2015, the Group received major approvals and started the drilling work one month later. However, the prohibition BSEE Shell first to penetrate into the deeper oil-bearing layers under the sea because lacked a ship that the wellbore could include the prevention of oil spills. With the arrival of this ship, the Authority now picked up ihrVerbot for one of the bays.

2010 had caused on the run by Shell competitor BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst oil spill to date an explosion. Eleven people lost their lives, hundreds of millions of liters of oil into the sea and facing massive damage.

Environmentalists criticized the approval for Shell violently. The Greenpeace head of the USA, Annie Leonard, said: “This decision means that President Obama puts the fate of the Arctic this summer in the hands of Shell.” And they announced to resistance: “The government should know better but you looks, how big the movement has become the protection of the Arctic with this catastrophic plan they will only get bigger…” . The organization has been fighting for years that the Arctic remains free of drillships and islands

How difficult was tackling a possible accident, see a recent example: For example, the Danish navy met according to Greenpeace off the coast of Greenland on an oil slick, but could not make any more precise statements to due to adverse conditions. A similar helplessness feared the organization even when it comes to problems with the drilling off the coast of Alaska. Therefore, the environmentalists called on Shell to “stop all oil drilling in the Arctic immediately”.

The Sierra Club, America’s oldest conservation organization, criticized the decision is directed against the findings of science, against the will of hundreds of thousands of Americans and against common sense. The chairman of the organization, Michael Brune, said: “President Obama is compromised its climate political legacy.”