Green groups sue Interior to thwart Shell’s Arctic drilling

Environmental and Alaska native groups are suing the Interior Department over its approval of Royal Dutch Shell’s plan to begin drilling in Arctic waters off Alaska's northern coast as soon as next year.

The groups allege that Shell lacks adequate oil-spill cleanup plans.

“A spill in the Arctic Ocean would devastate polar bears, bowhead whales and other marine mammals and would severely affect Native subsistence communities which have thrived in this region for generations,” notes a joint statement Thursday from the Native Village of Point Hope, the Alaska Wilderness League, the Center for Biological Diversity and roughly a dozen other groups.

The lawsuit, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, comes nearly two months after Interior approved the oil giant’s exploration plan for the Beaufort Sea.

But even with that approval in hand, the company needs several other approvals to conduct operations, such as Interior drilling permits. The company is also seeking approvals for exploration in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s coast.

The lawsuit alleges that Interior’s offshore drilling arm, in approving Shell’s Beaufort Sea plan, violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

It’s the latest move in a years-long battle over the Arctic between green groups and Shell, which has spent billions of dollars on leases and other costs in its quest to drill in Arctic seas thought to hold billions of barrels of oil.

A spokeswoman for Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement had no comment on the lawsuit.

Other groups involved with the lawsuit include Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and other national and Alaskan organizations.

Shell spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh said in an email that the company believes Interior’s offshore drilling branch was “thorough” in its analysis of the Beaufort Sea plan, and added “we remain confident the conditional approval our Plan will be upheld in Court.”

This post was updated at 4:23 p.m.