Court decision clouds Shell Arctic drilling plan

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

Royal Dutch Shell's plans to drill in the Arctic this summer grew more uncertain Wednesday when a U.S. federal court rejected the environmental analysis underlying the lease of the offshore parcel.

 

The Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management used an "arbitrary and capricious" estimate that oil and gas production in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest shores would yield 1 billion barrels of oil, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in its opinion. That analysis potentially understated the environmental risks of development, the court said.

 

The ruling is another hiccup for Shell, which scaled back its Arctic drilling plans for this year after it skipped drilling last summer following a series of mishaps in 2012. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has not approved the oil firm's revised plan.

 

In the opinion, Judge William A. Fletcher wrote that the agency's reasoning "that since the most likely foreseeable outcome is no oil development at all, one billion barrels of oil production is actually a generous estimate" was "flawed."