Gulf oil rigs aimed for Arctic

Today, human and environmental rights defenders have been approached to prevent success of Shell Oil's general manager heading the company’s Alaska business with its billion dollar hopes: ten rigs similar to those in the Gulf, two like the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, and for the public to remain silent.

America's Arctic Ocean future is to be decided within weeks as Secretary of the Interior is poised to hand to Shell what they have requested but human and environmental rights defenders want support to prevent this.

View slideshow: Human rights and traditional values of Alaska's Indigenous Peoples

Shell Oil's general manager, Pete Slaiby is heading from Houston the company’s Alaska business according to Petroleum News.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s appeals board has been withholding crucial air pollution permits, leading some Republicans in Congress to seek legislation to strip EPA of its drilling oversight.

Foxnews.com reported, ‘Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days.

According to Fox News, Slaiby is especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area.

“We think the issues were really not major,” Slaiby said, “and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.”

Human and environmental rights groups are concerned about such statements and about the Department of the Interior continuing to trust oil industry claims that offshore drilling is "safe and clean" and now, Shell Oil has increased the number of catastrophic causing deep sea oil drilling in the Arctic from six to ten despite public outcry.

Despite pressure from Alaska Wilderness League, Shell Oil, who had planned for Arctic drilling based on the same untested assumptions that doomed the Deepwater Horizon rig and continues to doom Gulf Coast residents' lives, actually escalated their Arctic drilling scheme from six new oil wells to ten.

The Secretary of the Interior is poised to approve Shell's plan according to Alaska Wilderness League.

The League is leading the effort to preserve Alaska’s wilderness by engaging citizens, sharing resources, collaborating with other organizations, educating the public, and providing a constant voice for Alaska in the nation’s capital from all 50 states that work together to keep Alaska’s wild places protected for future generations. The League is a member of the Alaska Coalition, helping facilitate and staff the Coalition to further support its continued success.

Alaska Wilderness League is "naturally" campaigning to tell Secretary Salazar to protect America's shores.

Cindy Shogan, Executive Director of the the League said in a written statement today that it's time to tell Salazar to, "Put down the rubber stamp and protect our shores. America's only Arctic ecosystem is too precious to lose."

The Department of the Interior is responsible for regulating oil drilling, and ensuring oil companies have a plan to clean up a spill if it happens.

"But for years they have been approving unrealistic, impossible clean-up plans," said Shogan.

"Like BP's plan for the Gulf, Shell's oil spill plan for the Arctic is riddled with falsehoods and inaccuracies."

According to Alaska Wilderness League, Shell's rush to drill in the Arctic:

Is not safe.
Is not evidence based in that here is no proven technology to clean up oil spilled amid the Arctic's broken sea ice and emergency response equipment is hundreds of miles away.
Is not clean.

Shell claims to have 'perfected Arctic oil spill response' but is relying on a plan that includes what Shogan calls "glorified mops and buckets" similar to the New York times calling the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station's makeshift work for the now officially declared emergency there.

Shogan stated, "It's not realistic. Shell claims it can clean up 30 times more oil in the harsh Arctic climate than what was recovered in the temperate Gulf of Mexico."

Alaska Wilderness League is pressuring Shell by exposing "these truths about Shell's drilling plans."

"But Shell won't reconsider its plans – instead it has escalated them from six new wells to ten, amplifying its false chorus through the halls of government, "safe and clean, safe and clean..."

"Shell's billion-dollar hope is that you stay silent while it muscles Interior into rubberstamping its faulty plans to drill 10 new oil wells in our one and only Arctic Ocean."

Learn more by doing: See "Speak up! Shell's untested, unsafe Arctic drilling should not be approved."

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