Shell, of course, says there is nothing to worry about. In an e-mail to the Associated Press, Shell VP Pete Slaiby told the AP’s Dan Joling: “We are working hard to identify additional measures that could be incorporated into the (safety) program.” Do tell.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MAY 15, 2010

By JIM CARLTON

ANCHORAGE, Alaska—Plans by Royal Dutch Shell PLC to begin exploratory oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean this summer are drawing increased scrutiny in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Interior Department officials—under pressure from native and environmental groups to halt the activity—say their final drilling permits will be contingent on new safety reviews.

Last fall, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved Shell’s plans to drill five exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas after the area was opened to oil and gas leasing in 2008 by the Bush administration. But Interior still has to sign off on the permits, and officials there now say their decision would rest, in part, on the outcome of a federal review President Barack Obama ordered completed by May 28 of safety issues pertaining to drilling in U.S. offshore waters.

Meanwhile, a coalition of 14 environmental groups joined by the native village of Point Hope, Alaska, sent a letter to Mr. Salazar on May 5 asking him to reconsider Shell’s approval on grounds that the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency that regulates offshore drilling, didn’t “analyze or disclose the effects of a large oil spill” from the exploratory drilling when the MMS approved it.

On May 3, the Northwest Arctic Borough—populated mostly by Alaskan native people—sent a letter to the MMS urging that Shell’s plans be suspended or revoked until the cause of the April 20 Gulf spill at a BP PLC-owned well can be determined.

A key concern among all the groups: that a giant spill in the Arctic Ocean would devastate the fragile environment, and wreak havoc on the culture and economy of native villages that depend on subsistence hunting of marine creatures like the bowhead whale. “The ocean is our garden,” said Earl Kingik, a tribal elder in the Inupiat community of Point Hope. “If any oil spills in our garden, the currents would blow it to us.”

Arctic drilling in Alaska has been mostly confined to coastal land areas such as at Prudhoe Bay, but both the industry and state are pushing to open new fields offshore to help keep oil flowing through the aging Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Shell officials say they have no plans to delay their drilling, but acknowledge that the Gulf spill didn’t help the Anglo-Dutch company’s public-relations efforts. “Yeah, I woke up that day [of the spill] and said, ‘Yes, this truly will impact the way people look at this industry,’ ” said Pete Slaiby, a Shell vice president in Anchorage.

As part of the federal safety review, MMS Director Elizabeth Birnbaum on May 6 sent a letter to Shell officials asking for an accounting of any additional safety procedures that the company is proposing in light of the Gulf spill. That disaster, she wrote to Shell Oil Co. President Marvin Odum, “highlights the importance of taking every step necessary to ensure the safety of all offshore drilling operations.”

But Shell officials said the Arctic drilling poses less of a threat of a disastrous spill than the Gulf, in part because of differences in geography.

One difference, Mr. Slaiby said, is that the BP well at 5,000 feet deep on the Gulf floor was under far greater pressure than Shell’s would be, because the seabed where the exploratory drilling is to take place is only about 150 feet deep. He added that his company’s drilling sites also would be surrounded by ice much of the year, helping to hold any spilled oil in place for a cleanup.

Shell officials also say they will have the protective barriers known as boom, ice cutters and equipment in place to respond quickly to any spill. But critics question the effectiveness of a response given the remoteness of the Arctic, and say it would be hard to contain any oil during the spring season when the icepack moves a great deal.

“It would be impossible to control it,” said Richard Steiner, a former marine-biology professor at the University of Alaska and a longtime industry critic. “That’s why Obama should take this off the table.”

Shell officials say they could clean oil in any ice condition, and point to an industry-commissioned study completed in 2009 that concluded a spill in ice-covered waters can be easier to control and clean up than in non-icy waters.

Even more important than spill response, though, is prevention, Shell officials say. “The idea is, we don’t want a spill,” Mr. Slaiby said. “This is devastating to us, too.”

Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com

WSJ ARTICLE

Photo shows the coastal plain within the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Image Library. REUTERS/HANDOUT/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

REUTERS

May 14, 2010 11:44 EDT

– Dennis Takahashi-Kelso is executive vice president of Ocean Conservancy and was Alaska Commissioner of Environmental Conservation at the time of the Exxon Valdez spill. Jim Ayers is vice president and senior adviser at Oceana and was executive director of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. Any views expressed here are their own. –

As we are seeing each day, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform blowout in America’s Gulf coast is a human and environmental tragedy.

The oil platform was drilling an exploratory well for British Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico when there was a blowout, resulting in the loss of 11 workers’ lives and uncontrolled releases of fuel and crude oil.

The tragic results occurred despite some of the best technology and spill response capabilities in the world, including 32 spill-response vessels and skimming capacity of more than 171,000 barrels per day, among many other advances and planning systems.

In a few short months, Royal Dutch Shell is set to begin exploratory drilling in the Arctic—another rich and fragile region.

The Arctic acts as Earth’s air conditioner, but it is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet due to climate change.

If a spill occurs in the harsh, unpredictable Arctic environment, it could spell disaster for ecosystems and wildlife, as well as the Native peoples of the region, whose way of life depends upon healthy ocean ecosystems.

Little or no capacity exists to handle accidents and oil spills in ice-filled seas. In fact, the U.S. Coast Guard acknowledges that there is no proven  technology available today to contain and clean up an oil spill where sea ice is present.

The Minerals Management Service, the federal agency in charge of drilling leases, and Shell have tried to assure the public that there are virtually no risks from exploratory drilling in the Arctic.

In fact, in their environmental assessment necessary to win the right to drill in the Arctic, Shell stated outright that exploratory drilling in the Arctic poses “a statistically insignificant risk of a large, catastrophic oil spill (blow out)”.

Furthermore, Minerals Management Service and Shell did not even include the possibility of a major spill in their risk analyses of exploratory drilling in the Arctic.

The Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico should result in a sobering reassessment of the risks of offshore oil and gas development anywhere in the United States, but especially in the Arctic.

The Arctic is one of the least-understood regions of the planet, making it difficult to predict the consequences of increasing industrial activity and the inevitable unintended consequences, such as oil spills.

We simply do not have a thorough understanding of the potential risks, nor do we have the proper capacity and technology to ensure that these operations are safe.

As events in the Gulf clearly demonstrate, the decision to allow Shell to move forward with exploratory drilling is premature and should be reversed. At the very least, Shell should voluntarily suspend exploratory drilling. If Shell is unwilling to do so, Minerals Management Service must halt the plans.

Nearly a generation after the Exxon Valdez spill, our addiction to oil still threatens our coastal communities, marine wildlife, economy, and the ocean—the life support system of our planet.

Let’s heed the lessons of the Gulf of Mexico accident. We need a time out on expansion of oil drilling in the Arctic. A precedent has already been set.

Last August the National Marine Fisheries Service closed U.S. Arctic waters to expansion of commercial fishing above 60 degrees North Latitude because we do not yet know how those actions will impact this ever-changing and important region. The Minerals Management Service should follow this wise course.

And President Obama must demand accountability.

BP should be held responsible for Gulf clean-up and restoration. Any failure of this magnitude demands an Independent Commission to investigate the cause, response and impacts, and to make recommendations on our ability to evaluate and address the risks of offshore drilling.

Until the work of the Commission is complete there must be no new drilling; exploratory efforts in other regions should be put on hold; and there must be no Congressional action to open new areas to drilling.

REUTERS ARTICLE

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

By IAN URBINA Published: May 13, 2010

Charlie Riedel/Associated Press: A brown pelican flew Thursday past protective booms surrounding the Breton National Wildlife Reserve in the Gulf of Mexico.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 14, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

WASHINGTON — The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists.

Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.

Under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Minerals Management Service is required to get permits to allow drilling where it might harm endangered species or marine mammals.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is responsible for protecting endangered species and marine mammals. It has said on repeated occasions that drilling in the gulf affects these animals, but the minerals agency since January 2009 has approved at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic blasting projects and 346 drilling plans. Agency records also show that permission for those projects and plans was granted without getting the permits required under federal law.

“M.M.S. has given up any pretense of regulating the offshore oil industry,” said Kierán Suckling, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group in Tucson, which filed notice of intent to sue the agency over its noncompliance with federal law concerning endangered species. “The agency seems to think its mission is to help the oil industry evade environmental laws.”

Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Minerals Management Service, said her agency had full consultations with NOAA about endangered species in the gulf. But she declined to respond to additional questions about whether her agency had obtained the relevant permits.

Federal records indicate that these consultations ended with NOAA instructing the minerals agency that continued drilling in the gulf was harming endangered marine mammals and that the agency needed to get permits to be in compliance with federal law.

Responding to the accusations that agency scientists were being silenced, Ms. Barkoff added, “Under the previous administration, there was a pattern of suppressing science in decisions, and we are working very hard to change the culture and empower scientists in the Department of the Interior.”

On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced plans to reorganize the minerals agency to improve its regulatory role by separating safety oversight from the division that collects royalties from oil and gas companies. But that reorganization is not likely to have any bearing on how and whether the agency seeks required permits from other agencies like NOAA.

Criticism of the minerals agency has grown in recent days as more information has emerged about how it handled drilling in the gulf.

In a letter from September 2009, obtained by The New York Times, NOAA accused the minerals agency of a pattern of understating the likelihood and potential consequences of a major spill in the gulf and understating the frequency of spills that have already occurred there.

The letter accuses the agency of highlighting the safety of offshore oil drilling operations while overlooking more recent evidence to the contrary. The data used by the agency to justify its approval of drilling operations in the gulf play down the fact that spills have been increasing and understate the “risks and impacts of accidental spills,” the letter states. NOAA declined several requests for comment.

The accusation that the minerals agency has ignored risks is also being levied by scientists working for the agency.

Managers at the agency have routinely overruled staff scientists whose findings highlight the environmental risks of drilling, according to a half-dozen current or former agency scientists.

The scientists, none of whom wanted to be quoted by name for fear of reprisals by the agency or by those in the industry, said they had repeatedly had their scientific findings changed to indicate no environmental impact or had their calculations of spill risks downgraded.

“You simply are not allowed to conclude that the drilling will have an impact,” said one scientist who has worked for the minerals agency for more than a decade. “If you find the risks of a spill are high or you conclude that a certain species will be affected, your report gets disappeared in a desk drawer and they find another scientist to redo it or they rewrite it for you.”

Another biologist who left the agency in 2005 after more than five years and who now works as an industry consultant said that agency officials went out of their way to accommodate the oil and gas industry.

He said, for example, that seismic activity from drilling can have a devastating effect on mammals and fish, but that agency officials rarely enforced the regulations meant to limit those effects.

He also said the agency routinely ceded to the drilling companies the responsibility for monitoring species that live or spawn near the drilling projects.

“What I observed was M.M.S. was trying to undermine the monitoring and mitigation requirements that would be imposed on the industry,” he said.

Aside from allowing BP and other companies to drill in the gulf without getting the required permits from NOAA, the minerals agency has also given BP and other drilling companies in the gulf blanket exemptions from having to provide environmental impact statements.

Much as BP’s drilling plan asserted that there was no chance of an oil spill, the company also claimed in federal documents that its drilling would not have any adverse effect on endangered species.

The gulf is known for its biodiversity. Various endangered species are found in the area where the Deepwater Horizon was drilling, including sperm whales, blue whales and fin whales.

In some instance, the minerals agency has indeed sought and received permits in the gulf to harm certain endangered species like green and loggerhead sea turtles. But the agency has not received these permits for endangered species like the sperm and humpback whales, which are more common in the areas where drilling occurs and thus are more likely to be affected.

Tensions between scientists and managers at the agency erupted in one case last year involving a rig in the gulf called the BP Atlantis. An agency scientist complained to his bosses of catastrophic safety and environmental violations. The engineer said these complaints were ignored, so he took his concerns to higher officials at the Interior Department.

“The purpose of this letter is to restate in writing our concern that the BP Atlantis project presently poses a threat of serious, immediate, potentially irreparable and catastrophic harm to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and its marine environment, and to summarize how BP’s conduct has violated federal law and regulations,” Kenneth Abbott, the agency scientist, wrote in a letter to officials at the Interior Department that was dated May 27.

The letter added: “From our conversation on the phone, we understand that M.M.S. is already aware that undersea manifolds have been leaking and that major flow lines must already be replaced. Failure of this critical undersea equipment has potentially catastrophic environmental consequences.”

Almost two months before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, sent a letter to the agency raising concerns about the BP Atlantis and questioning its oversight of the rig.

After the disaster, Mr. Salazar said he would delay granting any new oil drilling permits.

But the minerals agency has issued at least five final approval permits to new drilling projects in the gulf since last week, records show.

Despite being shown records indicating otherwise, Ms. Barkoff said her agency had granted no new permits since Mr. Salazar made his announcement.

Other agencies besides NOAA have begun criticizing the minerals agency.

At a public hearing in Louisiana this week, a joint panel of Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service officials investigating the explosion grilled minerals agency officials for allowing the offshore drilling industry to be essentially “self-certified,” as Capt. Hung Nguyen of the Coast Guard, a co-chairman of the investigation, put it.

In addition to the minerals agency and the Coast Guard, the Deepwater Horizon was overseen by the Marshall Islands, the “flag of convenience” under which it was registered.

No one from the Marshall Islands ever inspected the rig. The nongovernmental organizations that did were paid by the rig’s operator, in this case Transocean.

By: DAN JOLING
Associated Press
05/13/10 7:20 PM EDT

Today, Royal Dutch Shell is holding back the tears no more. Shell apologises to all inhabitants of Nigeria’s Niger Delta for the many years of human rights violations, for which Shell takes full responsibility.

Confronted with massive evidence of human rights violations that can only be attributed to its operations in the Niger Delta, Royal Dutch Shell is extremely proud to be the first international petrochemical company to publicly say:

We are sorry.

Since Shell first discovered oil in the Niger Delta in 1956, the company has ravished the land and polluted the environment. “We thought these people didn’t know what was good for them,” explains Bradford Houppe, Vice-President of Shell’s newly established Ethical Affairs Committee. “We never knew that we were bringing them impoverishment, conflict, abuse and deprivation. Now we know.” Shell acknowledges that it is responsible for large-scale oil spills, waste dumping and gas flaring. Each year, hundreds of oil spills occur, many of which are caused by corrosion of oil pipes and poor maintenance of infrastructure. “Our failure to deal with these spills swiftly and the lack of effective clean-up greatly exacerbate their human rights and environmental impact,” says Houppe. “And that is wrong. It’s just really wrong.”

More than 60 per cent of the people in the Niger Delta depend on the natural environment for their livelihood. But due to the oil pollution, many of them use polluted water to drink and to cook and wash with, and eat fish contaminated with oil and other toxins. Oil spills and waste dumping have also seriously damaged agricultural land.

The destruction of livelihoods and the lack of redress have led people to steal oil and vandalise oil infrastructure in an attempt to gain compensation or clean-up contracts. Armed groups engage in large-scale theft of oil and the ransoming of oil workers. Government reprisals frequently involve excessive force and the collective punishment of communities, thus deepening general anger and resentment.

Between 2005 and 2008, the Nigerian government received around $36 billion in taxes and royalties from Shell. “They have never, not in the slightest, held us to account for all the wrong we did,” says Houppe. “So without taking back any of our apologies, by all means: blame them too!”

A comprehensive Plan of Action, featuring general apologies, detailed apologies, apologies in Braille and apologies in rhyme that Shell employees will hang on the walls in their offices, will be presented at Shell’s Annual General Meeting on 18 May 2010 in The Hague.

http://shellapologises.com/statement.html

RELATED EMAIL SENT TO SHELL ETHICS BOSS RICHARD WISEMAN

From: John Donovan <john@shellnews.net>
Date: 13 May 2010 08:46:25 BST
To: richard.wiseman@shell.com
Cc: michiel.brandjes@shell.com
Subject: Shell Apologises for Human Rights Violations in Nigeria. Is this a hoax or a ploy?

Dear Mr Wiseman

Is this a hoax or a ploy?

Shell Apologises for Human Rights Violations in Niger Delta

We will of course publish any reply on an unedited basis.

Kind regards
John Donovan

REPLY FROM MR WISEMAN

From: richard.wiseman@shell.com
Date: 13 May 2010 09:31:45 BST
To: john@shellnews.net
Cc: michiel.brandjes@shell.com
Subject: RE: Shell Apologises for Human Rights Violations in NIgeria. Is this a hoax or a ploy?

Dear Mr Donovan,

The statement you refer to is not Shell’s.  Our position is set out most recently in our 2009 Sustainability Report which can be found on line at:

http://sustainabilityreport.shell.com/2009/servicepages/welcome.html

You can order a hard copy from:

bbs@shellbankside.co.uk

Regards

Richard Wiseman

Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer
Royal Dutch Shell plc
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA

Registered in England and Wales number 4366849
Registered Office:  Shell Centre, London, SE1
Headquarters: Carel van Bylandtlaan 30, 2596 HR
The Hague, The Netherlands

RELATED POSTINGS ON SHELL BLOG

1. Regularbrowser
   on May 13th, 2010 at 10:24 am

   Dear John, I can save both Richard Wiseman and yourself the time, the video of the Niger Delta apology is a fake done by the Yes Men activist group.

2. Outsider
   on May 13th, 2010 at 10:08 am

   A quick search of the web for the name “Bradford Houppe” reveals that the date of the press release is April 1st.

RELATED WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men#Niger_Delta_Hoax

FROM THE YES MEN website:

Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Our targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.

http://theyesmen.org/

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Motiva Enterprises LLC (RDSA, RDSA.LN) Wednesday filed an emissions event report to Texas state environmental regulators stating that an early-day power outage slowed or shut several processing units.

The power interruption occurred just after 3:00 a.m. CDT and was caused by a fire at an electrical pole, the report to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said.

“Individual units followed start-up, shutdown and maintenance procedures to safely stabilize unit operations, and minimize emissions,” the filing said, but it was unclear whether operations had returned to normal.

A company representative wasn’t immediately available to comment.

Separately, Motiva reported its plan to restart a delayed coking unit following two weeks of maintenance earlier Wednesday. The start-up was scheduled to begin at approximately 9:00 a.m. CDT.

The Motiva Port Arthur refinery, 50% joint venture between units of Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA, RDSA.LN) and Saudi Aramco, has the capacity to process 275,000 barrels of crude oil a day.

-By Rose Marton-Vitale, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2146; rose.marton@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 12, 2010 19:31 ET (23:31 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

SOURCE ARTICLE

With exploratory drilling—the same kind BP was doing in the Gulf of Mexico—planned for this summer north of Alaska, environmentalists see a worrisome comparison.