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Justice Dept. strikes back against Alaska gov. on drilling lawsuit
The Obama administration is urging a federal court to nix litigation brought by Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R) that accuses the Interior Department of illegally blocking oil-and-gas drilling in federal waters off the state’s coast.
Justice Department attorneys filed a motion Friday that alleges the state lacked standing to bring the lawsuit in September. The state “fails to show any procedural or substantive injury whatsoever,” DoJ claims in the filing with a federal district court in Alaska.
Shell, for its part, is increasing pressure on the Obama administration to allow the company’s years-long effort to drill off Alaska’s coast to proceed.
“Eager to win approval for its stalled plan to drill for oil in the Alaskan Arctic, Royal Dutch Shell is beginning a public lobbying campaign, including national advertising, on Monday. As part of the effort, the giant oil company is promising to make unprecedented preparations to prevent the kind of disaster that polluted the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year,” The New York Times reported late Friday.
The company wants to begin drilling next year; the Obama administration in late May blocked the company’s plans to launch drilling in shallow Arctic waters last summer. The action is part of a broader review of oil-and-gas safety begun after the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico.
The lawsuit is unfolding against a wider political battle over offshore drilling policy.
Republicans and pro-drilling Democrats like Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska) and Mary Landrieu (La.) accuse the Obama administration of dragging its feet on permits in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
Interior says it is taking needed steps to ensure safety in the wake of the catastrophic BP oil spill. The agency has issued several new safety requirements in recent months.
Also, before the BP spill, Interior in March nixed four upcoming lease sales in Arctic waters, citing the need for more study of development there, even as it announced plans to allow wider offshore leasing in the 2012-2017 period.
“We are taking a cautious approach to offshore oil and gas development as we strengthen safety and oversight of offshore oil and gas operations. This includes the Arctic which presents unique environmental challenges,” Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said in a statement Saturday.
“We need additional information about spill risks and spill response capabilities which is why [Interior] Secretary [Ken] Salazar canceled the remaining four lease sales in the Arctic. We look forward to working with the governor as we move forward,” she said.
The DoJ filing, meanwhile, says that Alaska’s lawsuit doesn’t hold up for a number of reasons.
For one thing, it says the state failed to provide Interior a 60-day notice that it believed Salazar’s late-May decision to postpone action on Shell’s drilling permits was a violation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the statute that governs drilling in federal waters.
Interior is currently reviewing Shell’s plan to begin drilling in the Beaufort Sea next year, the lawsuit notes. It also claims the state cannot show any injury because Shell did not technically have a drilling permit application before Interior when the lawsuit was filed in September.
Shell — as part of a lengthy back-and-forth with Interior — submitted its most recent drilling permit application in early October.
The DoJ filing notes that Interior is reviewing the permit application and Shell’s revised exploration plan “in the regular course of business and in compliance with all applicable regulations — the State has not claimed otherwise.”
“Because there was no proposal for drilling for the agency to approve, deny, defer, or delay when the State initiated its action, there necessarily was no procedural or substantive injury to the State,” the filing states.
DoJ also alleges that the state’s lawsuit lacks merit on other grounds, challenging the claims that Interior’s policies are cutting state tax revenues and oil pipeline revenues and hindering opportunities to develop state-owned land.
Alaska is not entitled to revenue-sharing from leases in federal waters more than three nautical miles from the state coast, the filing notes in one of many attacks on the state’s lawsuit.
Parnell, in announcing the lawsuit in September, called offshore drilling a matter of “critical importance to Alaska's future and the economic and security interests of the United States.”
