Trump’s Order to Open Arctic Waters to Oil Drilling Was Unlawful, Federal Judge Finds

WASHINGTON — In a major legal blow to President Trump’s push to expand offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge ruled that an executive order by Mr. Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic coast was unlawful.

Barrow, Alaska, off the Chukchi Sea in the Arctic Ocean.
A federal judge ruled that an order by President Trump
lifting an Obama-era ban on Arctic Ocean drilling was unlawful.

The decision, by Judge Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, concluded late Friday that President Barack Obama’s 2015 and 2016 withdrawal from drilling of about 120 million acres of Arctic Ocean and about 3.8 million acres in the Atlantic “will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress.” She wrote that an April 2017 executive order by Mr. Trump revoking the drilling ban “is unlawful, as it exceeded the president’s authority.”

The decision, which is expected to be appealed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, immediately reinstates the drilling ban on most of the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska, a pristine region home to endangered species including polar bears and bowhead whales where oil companies have long sought to drill. Along the Atlantic coast, it blocks drilling around a series of coral canyons that run from Norfolk, Va., to the Canadian border which are home to unique deepwater corals and rare fish species.

Read the story from The New York Times by Coral Davenport - “Trump’s Order to Open Arctic Waters to Oil Drilling Was Unlawful, Federal Judge Finds."

U.S. Starts Process to Open Arctic to Offshore Drilling, Despite Federal Lawsuit

The Trump administration has begun the process to open a large area of federal waters off Alaska to oil and gas drilling, taking comments on a plan for drilling that is already being challenged in court.

Early exploratory wells in the American Arctic didn’t
produce enough oil or gas, and with falling oil prices,
many large companies abandoned plans for the region.
New attempts are running into other challenges. 

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced on Thursday that it is going to start accepting comments from the public about bringing oil drilling to roughly 65 million acres of offshore waters in the Beaufort Sea and plans to hold a lease sale in 2019.

The waters have been in dispute since early in the Trump administration. In one of his final acts as president, Barack Obama had placed them off limits to drilling. And in one of his early acts as president, Donald Trump moved to overturn that with an executive order of his own.

Read the Inside Climate News story by Sabrina Shankman - “U.S. Starts Process to Open Arctic to Offshore Drilling, Despite Federal Lawsuit.”

Companies take first steps to drill for oil in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Two Alaska Native corporations and a small oil services firm together have applied to do extensive seismic work next winter in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the first move toward development there since Congress voted late last year to open up the pristine wilderness to oil and gas drilling.

The isolation these Polar Bears have enjoyed for more
than three decades in a pristine Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge is threatened with the refuge
 being opened up for oil and gas exploration.

But while President Trump, congressional Republicans, the oil industry and Alaskan leaders have been pushing hard to develop the refuge that had been off-limits to petroleum exploration for more than three decades, the Interior Department’s initial response to the consortium’s permit application was scathing.

“This plan is not adequate,” Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service said in a reply to the seismic application, adding that it showed “a lack of applicable details for proper agency review.” Copies of the permit application and the Fish and Wildlife Service reply were obtained by The Washington Post.

Read The Washington Post story - “Companies take first steps to drill for oil in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

Kangaroo Island Mayor urges Norwegian oil giant not to drill in Bight

Peter Clements.

The Turnbull Government has re-opened more of the Great Australian Bight to oil and gas drilling, citing fuel security as a key concern.

Kangaroo Island Mayor Peter Clements is so concerned about the move he travelled to Norway to tell the annual general meeting of that country's biggest oil and gas company Statoil what his community thinks of the plan.

Statoil has taken on leases in the Bight that were abandoned by BP in late 2016 and it plans to start drilling late next year.

Listen to the interview on Radio National - “Kangaroo Island Mayor urges Norwegian oil giant not to drill in Bight.”