Don’t drill in Chukchi

Oil exploration in the environmentally sensitive waters of the Arctic never made sense. It didn’t make sense two years ago when the U.S. Interior Department approved leases in the polar bear habitat of the Chukchi Sea before it had even made its determination that the bear should be listed as a threatened species. It didn’t make sense in 2008 when the Bush administration pushed through additional leases off the Alaska shore during its lame-duck months, just before the Obama administration took the reins.

Today, the dangers of such exploratory drilling are compellingly obvious to everyone. As the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico unfolds, the nation has been given a sobering lesson in how catastrophic oil spills can confound even our best knowledge and technology.

That’s especially true in the Chukchi. Though the new drilling would be in much shallower water than the Deepwater Horizon rig in the gulf, it would take place in a region where rough seas, ice floes and frigid weather can create hazards to drilling as well as hamper emergency efforts. In addition, the region lacks the infrastructure, such as onshore docks at the nearest village, to support a massive response to an oil spill. The closest Coast Guard station is some 1,000 miles away.

Yet three Chukchi drilling operations are scheduled to begin in July, along with two more in the Beaufort Sea. Although the Obama administration earlier put a hold on most new offshore leases around Alaska — and more recently backed off on its support for expanded offshore drilling along the Southeastern United States — it has not made a final determination on the Chukchi drilling this summer by Shell Oil and has asked the company to supply more information by May 18.

The administration should halt the summer plans altogether. The Minerals Management Service, an arm of the Interior Department, never fully studied the effects a full blowout would have because it figured the chances of such a catastrophe were minimal. We now know the dangers of that kind of thinking; the agency made the same calculation with the Deepwater Horizon lease. In addition, the federal government has not yet made a formal determination on critical habitat for the polar bear, but it is likely to include the Chukchi Sea.

New oil exploration in environmentally sensitive areas is too damaging a way for the nation to meet its energy demands. Nothing that Shell can tell the government by May 18 will change that. The Obama administration should move decisively to end the lease.