Did you understand why Alaska sued the U.S. Department of Interior, seeking to reverse a decision to give polar bears protection under the Endangered Species Act? It is because oil companies bid $2.66 billion for oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea off Northwest Alaska. Shell Oil accounted for more than three-fourths of the winning bids in Alaska. Federal protections under the Endangered Species Act will complicate Shell Oil's bid to drill for oil in the bear's habitat.
The Minerals Management Service received 667 bids for leases covering 2.8 million acres on Alaska’s outer continental shelf. One area attracting a lot of interest from Shell Oil was Alaska's Chukchi Sea, which is home to one of two U.S. polar bear populations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a part of the Interior Department, listed polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Thus, to protect potential oil royalties from the region, Alaska sued to block the federal government from protecting polar bears in the oil rich region under the Endangered Species Act.
Gov. Sarah Palin claims that if the polar bear are protected by the Endangered Species Act, it will cripple offshore oil and gas development. The American Petroleum Institute and four other business groups also filed suit to reverse the federal government’s listing of the polar bear as a threatened species.
Apparently, Gov. Palin’s decision to challenge the federal agency’s decision to protect the polar bears was not popular with the state’s marine mammal scientists. Like federal scientists, the state scientists concluded that polar bears are threatened with extinction because of a shrinking ice cap. Thus, Sarah Palin flatly opposes federal protections for polar bears under the Endangered Species Act because it endangers oil royalties.
It is all up to federal courts to decide this battle of oil money versus the polar bears. Big oil and big money versus the polar bears in a thawing artic sea.
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