Each summer and autumn, the Inupiat, natives of the arid north coast of Alaska, take their sealskin boats and gun-fired harpoons and go whale hunting.
Kills are celebrated throughout villages as whaling captains share their catch with relatives and neighbors. Muktuk, or raw whale skin and blubber, is a delicacy.
But that traditional way of life is coming into conflict with one of the modern world's most urgent priorities: finding more oil.
Royal Dutch Shell is determined to exploit vast reserves believed to lie off the Alaskan coast. The Bush administration backs the idea and has issued offshore leases in recent years.
Those leases have received far less attention than failed efforts to drill in the U.S. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but they may prove far more important. By some estimates, the oil under the Alaskan seabed could exceed the reserves remaining in the rest of the United States, though how much can ever be recovered is uncertain.
Shell is eager to find out. It tried to make headway this past summer, only to be stopped by an alliance of Inupiat whalers and environmental groups who filed a suit in a U.S. federal court.
They argue that noisy drilling off the Alaskan coast could disrupt migration routes for bowhead whales, making it impossible for the Inupiat to capture their allotted share of about 60 animals. A court hearing is scheduled for Wednesday to consider whether the company can move forward, although a ruling is not expected for months.
Native communities are not unalterably opposed to oil production - on the contrary, many rely on oil for their livelihoods. The North Slope Borough, a countylike organization where most of the 10,000 Inupiat in Alaska live, gets the bulk of its $98 million budget each year from taxing onshore oil operations.
Native corporations also derive a large part of their business from serving the oil industry in Prudhoe Bay. Community leaders are caught between a desire to preserve traditional whaling and the economic necessity of permitting the oil industry to move into new areas.
"It's a hell of a dilemma," said Edward Itta, the mayor of North Slope Borough, who is opposed to Shell's drilling plans. "Without a doubt, America's energy needs are way up and something's going to happen up there. It's a way of life against an opposing value. This way of life has value; nobody can put it in dollars and cents."
The oil resources off the Alaskan coast amount to about 27 billion barrels, according to U.S. government estimates, about the same as the original reserves of the giant Alaskan Prudhoe Bay field discovered in 1968.
That would be enough to satisfy U.S. oil consumption for three years if every last drop could be pumped, which is unlikely.
It is a tantalizing bonanza for the Bush administration, which has strongly backed exploration to make up for a decline in domestic oil production; for oil companies, which are scouring the world to find new supplies; and for the Alaskan authorities, who need to keep the trans-Alaska pipeline flowing.
Oil offshore is hardly a new discovery in Alaska. Soon after petroleum was found under the North Slope 40 years ago, companies began to suspect there might be oil under the Beaufort Sea and beyond.
Shell was one of the early pioneers of Arctic exploration in the following decades, but it abandoned the region along with other companies after the oil price collapse of the mid-1980s.
Five years ago, as the company sought new places to drill, Shell geologists dusted off their old seismic surveys. They identified a spot called Hammerhead, where the company first drilled in 1985. They renamed it Sivulliq, meaning "the first one" in Inupiat, and decided to drill there. The area, about 15 miles, or 25 kilometers, offshore in 110 feet, or 35 meters, of water, is just opposite the western coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Shell moved aggressively to secure offshore holdings after 2005. The company paid about $80 million for leases in the Beaufort Sea, outspending its competitors.
"If you look at the Arctic, this is an incredibly important energy resource for the United States," said Marvin Odum, Shell's executive vice president for the Americas. "Going in with paced development is the right way to go."
Odum says Shell is respectful of native rights and can safely drill in the Beaufort Sea without disturbing whales or whalers. The company offered to shut down drilling operations during the whaling season and said it would monitor migration routes with the latest equipment, including aerial drones.
In February, Shell obtained its drilling permit from the Minerals Management Service, a government agency in charge of overseeing oil and gas production in U.S. waters. That allowed Shell to bring in a small armada of ships and emergency craft to prepare for the drilling season, which lasts 90 to 120 days in the summer, when the Beaufort Sea is largely free of ice.
But in April, environmental groups sued the agency, which is part of the Interior Department, asserting it had not taken sufficient account of the risks, to whales and other species, of an oil spill.
The plaintiffs, later joined by the North Slope Borough and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, won an injunction in July from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco, which ordered Shell not to drill while the case was under review. In September, the company lost an important ruling, effectively ending drilling efforts this year.
Each side will present its arguments Wednesday, and the court is expected to rule before the next drilling season begins.
Despite the delays, Shell says it believes its exploration program will be allowed to resume next year. In a bid to reach out to the Inupiat, the company says it spent several million dollars in community development projects on the North Slope; it did not provide a specific figure. It gave $250,000, for example, to a science and engineering program at the University of Alaska geared toward native students.
But the company's opponents argue that Shell moved into Alaska too aggressively, surprised the Inupiat with the scale of its operations and did a poor job of reaching out to them.
"This lawsuit was a way of getting everyone's attention and to get our concerns addressed," said Itta, the mayor.
Kills are celebrated throughout villages as whaling captains share their catch with relatives and neighbors. Muktuk, or raw whale skin and blubber, is a delicacy.
But that traditional way of life is coming into conflict with one of the modern world's most urgent priorities: finding more oil.
Royal Dutch Shell is determined to exploit vast reserves believed to lie off the Alaskan coast. The Bush administration backs the idea and has issued offshore leases in recent years.
Those leases have received far less attention than failed efforts to drill in the U.S. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but they may prove far more important. By some estimates, the oil under the Alaskan seabed could exceed the reserves remaining in the rest of the United States, though how much can ever be recovered is uncertain.
Shell is eager to find out. It tried to make headway this past summer, only to be stopped by an alliance of Inupiat whalers and environmental groups who filed a suit in a U.S. federal court.
They argue that noisy drilling off the Alaskan coast could disrupt migration routes for bowhead whales, making it impossible for the Inupiat to capture their allotted share of about 60 animals. A court hearing is scheduled for Wednesday to consider whether the company can move forward, although a ruling is not expected for months.
Native communities are not unalterably opposed to oil production - on the contrary, many rely on oil for their livelihoods. The North Slope Borough, a countylike organization where most of the 10,000 Inupiat in Alaska live, gets the bulk of its $98 million budget each year from taxing onshore oil operations.
Native corporations also derive a large part of their business from serving the oil industry in Prudhoe Bay. Community leaders are caught between a desire to preserve traditional whaling and the economic necessity of permitting the oil industry to move into new areas.
"It's a hell of a dilemma," said Edward Itta, the mayor of North Slope Borough, who is opposed to Shell's drilling plans. "Without a doubt, America's energy needs are way up and something's going to happen up there. It's a way of life against an opposing value. This way of life has value; nobody can put it in dollars and cents."
The oil resources off the Alaskan coast amount to about 27 billion barrels, according to U.S. government estimates, about the same as the original reserves of the giant Alaskan Prudhoe Bay field discovered in 1968.
That would be enough to satisfy U.S. oil consumption for three years if every last drop could be pumped, which is unlikely.
It is a tantalizing bonanza for the Bush administration, which has strongly backed exploration to make up for a decline in domestic oil production; for oil companies, which are scouring the world to find new supplies; and for the Alaskan authorities, who need to keep the trans-Alaska pipeline flowing.
Oil offshore is hardly a new discovery in Alaska. Soon after petroleum was found under the North Slope 40 years ago, companies began to suspect there might be oil under the Beaufort Sea and beyond.
Shell was one of the early pioneers of Arctic exploration in the following decades, but it abandoned the region along with other companies after the oil price collapse of the mid-1980s.
Five years ago, as the company sought new places to drill, Shell geologists dusted off their old seismic surveys. They identified a spot called Hammerhead, where the company first drilled in 1985. They renamed it Sivulliq, meaning "the first one" in Inupiat, and decided to drill there. The area, about 15 miles, or 25 kilometers, offshore in 110 feet, or 35 meters, of water, is just opposite the western coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Shell moved aggressively to secure offshore holdings after 2005. The company paid about $80 million for leases in the Beaufort Sea, outspending its competitors.
"If you look at the Arctic, this is an incredibly important energy resource for the United States," said Marvin Odum, Shell's executive vice president for the Americas. "Going in with paced development is the right way to go."
Odum says Shell is respectful of native rights and can safely drill in the Beaufort Sea without disturbing whales or whalers. The company offered to shut down drilling operations during the whaling season and said it would monitor migration routes with the latest equipment, including aerial drones.
In February, Shell obtained its drilling permit from the Minerals Management Service, a government agency in charge of overseeing oil and gas production in U.S. waters. That allowed Shell to bring in a small armada of ships and emergency craft to prepare for the drilling season, which lasts 90 to 120 days in the summer, when the Beaufort Sea is largely free of ice.
But in April, environmental groups sued the agency, which is part of the Interior Department, asserting it had not taken sufficient account of the risks, to whales and other species, of an oil spill.
The plaintiffs, later joined by the North Slope Borough and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, won an injunction in July from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco, which ordered Shell not to drill while the case was under review. In September, the company lost an important ruling, effectively ending drilling efforts this year.
Each side will present its arguments Wednesday, and the court is expected to rule before the next drilling season begins.
Despite the delays, Shell says it believes its exploration program will be allowed to resume next year. In a bid to reach out to the Inupiat, the company says it spent several million dollars in community development projects on the North Slope; it did not provide a specific figure. It gave $250,000, for example, to a science and engineering program at the University of Alaska geared toward native students.
But the company's opponents argue that Shell moved into Alaska too aggressively, surprised the Inupiat with the scale of its operations and did a poor job of reaching out to them.
"This lawsuit was a way of getting everyone's attention and to get our concerns addressed," said Itta, the mayor.
Via: International Herald Tribune|by Jad Mouawad
Tags: fotolog|Alaska|www.BajaeNergyBLOG.com|
