Court Says Environmental Impacts for Arctic Drilling were Downplayed

[GoLeft TV]

From Ring of Fire:

On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Department of the Interior’s environmental review of drilling leases for the Arctic is unsound. The court ruled that the Interior’s estimate of one billion barrels of recoverable oil from the Arctic Ocean was “chosen arbitrarily,” and said the department had examined “only the best case scenario for environmental harm, assuming oil development,” according to the decision.

The Interior Department based its assessment of environmental impacts on a one billion barrel estimate for recoverable oil, although the court notes in its decision that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates the amount could reach up to 12 billion barrels.

You can read the full article here at Ring of Fire.

[louis-t]

1. "Nothing will go wrong, we promise"

Said every oil company on the planet.

[happyslug]

2. Here is the actual opinion

http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/01/23/12-35287%20web%20corrected.pdf

This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

SUMMARY
Environmental Law

The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment entered in favor of federal defendants in an action challenging the government’s environmental impact statements analyzing the environmental effects of proposed leases for oil and gas development in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska.

The panel held that the Final Environmental Impact Statement and Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement prepared by the federal defendants properly took account of incomplete or unavailable information. The panel held, however, that the reliance in the Final Environmental Impact Statement on a one billion barrel estimate of total economically recoverable oil was arbitrary and capricious. The panel remanded for further proceedings.

Judge Rawlinson concurred in part and dissented in part.

Judge Rawlinson agreed with most of the majority opinion, but she did not agree that the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement acted arbitrarily in selecting one billion barrels of oil as the benchmark for analyzing the environmental affects of the proposed leases.