Royal Dutch Shell has developed safeguards to conduct offshore oil exploration in the Arctic and U.S. President says he’s impressed with what he sees. Obama says his administration delayed Shell’s application for exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska until it could provide necessary assurances. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has […]
Comment: Stop drilling in the Arctic
In late March, the U.S. Department of the Interior swung the door wide open to drilling in the remote waters of the Arctic Ocean when it announced that it was reaffirming controversial Bush-era leases for the Chukchi Sea. In 2008, the Bush administration offered nearly 30 million acres of remote and poorly understood ocean to […]
Looking for options
Alberta is in discussions with Alaska about shipping oil sands crude through the U.S. state to the Pacific as approval for the southbound Keystone XL pipeline languishes in Washington. The Alaska plan would involve constructing a pipeline along the Mackenzie River valley and then west to existing ports on the U.S. coast, Alberta Premier Jim […]
Single hull oil tankers banned from U.S. waters
It’s only been a quarter of a century since the United States passed it’s Oil Pollution Act. A year after the 1989 Exxon Valdez environmental disaster off the coast of Alaska, American politicians wrote a law requiring all new tankers need to have double hulls to prevent similar catastrophes. But single hull tankers were still […]
Northern oil spill exercise drills home the unknown
The first spill response drill conducted by the Alaska government, fuel shippers, and cleanup crews in the Bering Strait has given a measure for how much is still unknown about handling oil spills in the region. Department of Environmental Conservation will sort through the data collected and revise plans that are currently on the books. Colin […]