UPDATE: 20120302
Shell seeks to head off Arctic offshore drilling legal challenge with pre-emptive lawsuit
Shell Oil Co. is taking the offensive against environmental groups that have put legal roadblocks in the company’s path to offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean.
The Houston-based company on Wednesday sued 11 Alaska Native or environmental organizations that have challenged Arctic offshore drilling at various regulatory steps, starting with the sale of leases and continuing through nearly every permit Shell has needed to dip into the petroleum wealth believed to be in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest coast and the Beaufort Sea off the state’s north coast.
The lawsuit would initiate the inevitable court review of Shell’s Chukchi Sea oil spill response plan, said Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith.
“This pre-emptive action is an attempt to avoid challenges on the eve of summer drilling operations by organizations that have historically used last-minute legal maneuvers to delay properly approved operations,” Smith said by email.
Attorney Whit Sheard, of Oceana, an environmental group named in the lawsuit, called the lawsuit called “fairly frivolous.”
“They’re just trying to circumvent the normal timeline that we’re allowed under the process to look at the decision the federal government made, evaluate whether it’s legal and then exercise — or not exercise — our option to litigate,” he said.
Attorney Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity said Shell’s lawsuit is unlikely to succeed. It appeared to be an attempt to intimidate drilling plan opponents, he said.
“Shell probably would not have filed this case if they did not have real fear about whether the spill plan would survive legal scrutiny,” he said. His group continues to review the spill plan approval for its legality.
Shell, in a second Alaska lawsuit, targeted Greenpeace only, and late Thursday a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order aimed at keeping the environmental group’s activists off Shell drilling ships destined for Arctic waters.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason in Anchorage signed the 14-day order but declined to expand it to other Shell facilities, as requested by the company.
Actress Lucy Lawless and other Greenpeace activists last week boarded the drill ship Noble Discoverer in New Zealand before it left for the West Coast, where it will undergo cold-weather modifications. The activists were arrested Monday and charge with burglary.
Gleason’s order bars activists from interfering with the operation or movement of the Noble Discoverer when it enters U.S. waters or a second Shell drilling ship, the Kulluk, which is in Seattle. Shell plans to use the Kulluk in the Beaufort Sea.
Gleason declined to extend the restraining order to other Shell facilities as requested by the company but set a March 14 court date for a hearing on Shell’s request for an injunction. Greenpeace spokesman James Turner said Shell’s proposed restraining order would have been one of the broadest and most restrictive in U.S. legal history, applying to gas stations, regional offices or other venues around the country.
Shell hopes to drill up to three exploratory wells in the Chukchi during the short open water season this summer and two wells in the Beaufort. Both drill ships require a flotilla of support vessels, including spill response boats and gear, and the company wants legal challenges settled before amassing equipment and personnel.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement approved Shell’s spill response plan two weeks ago over the objections of critics who say oil companies have never demonstrated that they can clean up a spill in water where skimmers, boom and other equipment are affected by ice, which can range from slush to floes. Drill sites in the Chukchi are more than 1,000 miles from the nearest Coast Guard station and northern Alaska lacks infrastructure considered routine elsewhere, such as multiple deep water ports, major airports or accommodations for spill response workers.
Shell counters that its spill response team is largely self-contained. Shell support vessels will carry a capping stack that could be lowered over an underwater blowout if blowout preventers fail, as they did in BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. If a drill ship is damaged in a blowout, the second drill ship can drill a relief well, the company said. Response equipment staged in the fleet can be on the scene within an hour.
Shell's Frontier Discoverer drilling rig in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. (AP Photo/Shell Exploration & Production)
Shell Oil Co. has requested a legal review of its own oil-spill response plan for drilling in the Chukchi Sea, an unconventional move the company said is aimed at preventing a hypothetical last-minute challenge from environmental groups that could once again delay its ambitions.
The company, which filed a motion for review with the U.S. federal district court for the District of Alaska, has spent over $4 billion so far in its ambitions to drill exploratory wells off the northern coast of Alaska in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. But litigation and appeals of key permits by environmentalists have forced the company to delay its plans.
“Historically they have waited until very late in the process when we’re very close to [drilling season],” said Kelly op de Weegh, a company spokeswoman. “Then they file the challenge, which could delay us.”
The Interior Department approved the Chukchi spill-response plan earlier this month.
Op de Weegh said the motion won’t take away any groups’ legal rights. Rather, she said, Shell just aims to get a firm answer from the courts now rather than have to postpone its plans again should any groups challenge the plan’s approval on the eve of drilling season.
“This is a quite novel approach,” she added. “I’m not sure this has ever been done.”
The move comes as some supporters of Shell’s Alaska drilling plans remain concerned about the possibility of more litigation.
“They attempt to stop it any way that they can, and litigation seems to be the preferred strategy right now,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said earlier this month.
Environmental groups and Alaskan native groups have raised grave concerns about Shell’s plans to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. They contend no proven technology exists for stopping or cleaning up an oil spill into the icy Arctic waters.
Native groups are especially concerned about gaps in scientific knowledge of how drilling and a possible spill could affect subsistence and cultural resources, such as marine life, that they rely on.
“I think there’s a lot more that needs to be done and should be done, and I don’t think we should rush,” Rick Steiner, a marine and conservation biologist and former University of Alaska professor, said today before word of Shell’s announcement.
Shell and Interior Department officials have expressed confidence in the company’s oil-spill response plan. They point out that Shell will have numerous vessels on site and that the Coast Guard, with its own vessels, will stand by to oversee response to any spills.
“It’s truly a phenomenal collection of capability,” Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said.
Hayes and James Watson, head of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, also said Shell’s drilling and safety equipment would incorporate lessons from the 2010 Macondo oil spill — though environmental groups argue the administration hasn’t gone far enough in toughening safety standards since the disaster.
Op de Weegh also said the company has spent $60 million on Arctic science for better understanding of the unique Arctic ecosystem and environment.
“We agree that should hold this project up to a higher standard and should raise the bar because of the location we’re in,” she said. “But we also believe [the spill plan] was thoroughly reviewed.”
She added that one reason Shell is taking the unconventional legal action is because of the confidence the company has in the spill-response program and that plan’s approval by the Interior Department.
Here’s a list of companies Shell identifies in its legal motion as potentially challenging the spill plan’s approval:
Sierra Club
Greenpeace
Center for Biological Diversity
National Resources Defense Council
Oceana
Defenders of Wildlife
National Audubon Society
Alaska Wildness League
Northern Alaska Environmental Center
Pacific Environment
Wilderness Society
Ocean Conservancy
RedOil
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/29/shell-seeks-to-prevent-late-challenge-to-chukchi-spill-plan/
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