Shell’s Arctic gamble

Opinion: July 13, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times: The proposal by Shell Alaska to drill for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas of the Arctic sounded from the start like a dangerous environmental prospect in a particularly fragile ecosystem. The weather provides only a brief window of opportunity for oil exploration before winter ice makes it too hazardous. Booms and skimmers, the traditional methods of containing an oil spill on the water’s surface, are much less effective in those choppy, ice-flecked seas, and the usual emergency support — equipment, docks and Coast Guard vessels — are far away.

The Obama administration nevertheless approved the proposal after Shell developed an elaborate set of safeguards, including stronger well-drilling standards and the addition of a second rig nearby that could drill a relief well if there were a blowout. Shell also outfitted a barge with equipment designed to cap a spill at the bottom of the sea. Yet a lawsuit filed Tuesday by a coalition of environmental groups correctly claims that the spill response plan is inadequate.

The biggest problem is that the U.S. Interior Department wrongly accepted a key assertion by Shell: that the company would recapture 90 percent of the oil released by any spill. That’s a wildly optimistic number, never achieved in a major oil spill, even in much calmer waters than the Arctic’s.

Once that assumption is removed, it becomes obvious that the rest of the response plan is inadequate for keeping oil from reaching shore and key wildlife areas.

Shell is understandably anxious to get underway, before pack ice that forms in September and October makes it impossible to drill. But the pressure of time is no excuse for drilling with inadequate protections.