Obama Claims Arctic Drilling Is Out of His Hands. Environmentalists Disagree.

By Rose Hackman, Guardian UK

30 May 15

Activists say the president made it look like decision to allow Shell to resume drilling operations ‘is not in his hands’ despite executive actions in other areas

nvironmental groups were baffled on Thursday after President Barack Obama wrote a series of seemingly misleading tweets justifying Royal Dutch Shell being allowed back into the US Arctic for exploration and drilling.

Two weeks ago, the Obama administration gave Shell the go-ahead to restart drilling in the region despite repeated warnings from environmentalists that it could very probably lead to an ecological disaster as well as a finding in one of the government’s own reports that the likelihood of a spill in the next 77 years was as high as 75%.

The three tweets addressing the controversial issue appear to either be misleading or even possibly at times to misstate the facts, environmentalists say.

Obama, using his recently acquired @POTUS Twitter handle, answered a question posed to him: “Why are you allowing oil drilling in the Arctic if you are concerned about climate change?”

The president’s response was issued in three parts.

“We’ve shut off drilling in the most sensitive Arctic areas, including Bristol Bay,” the first part stated.

“But since we can’t prevent oil exploration completely in region we’re setting the highest possible standards,” he continued.

“Already rejected Shell’s original proposal as inadequate which shows we’re serious,” he concluded.

Michael LeVine, Pacific senior counsel with Oceana, called the tweets “disappointing”.

Shell willingly exited the Arctic at the end of 2012 after a series of mishaps and safety failures.

Addressing the claim that oil exploration could not be entirely prevented in the region, Cassady Sharp with Greenpeace said oil exploration in the US Arctic could be halted, and that the person who could halt it was the president himself.

“He has the power as the executive branch,” Sharp said, adding Obama had not shied away from executive action in other fields.

“He is skirting around the issue, making it look like the decision [to allow Shell into the US Arctic for drilling] is not in his hands, when it is.”

Authorization to allow Shell back into the Arctic was issued on 11 May by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an agency within the Department of Interior, which is overseen by President Obama.

It is possible that when Obama stated oil exploration could not be prevented in the region, he was referring to the pan-Arctic region, which includes non-US waters, LeVine conceded, but even then stating that the “highest possible standards” had been met was far from the reality.

LeVine described the way in which Shell had been allowed back into the US Arctic as a “fundamental failure of government”.

“The Department of Interior is rushing at Shell’s behest,” LeVine said.

The department “has proposed new prevention and response rules, but at the same time it has conditionally authorized Shell to proceed before those conditions are final”, he said.

Sharp, with Greenpeace, said the Obama administration’s green light had “ignored evidence of performance”, with Shell rigs already failing routine inspections in warmer, and therefore less threatening, waters this year.

The results of a third-party audit, an extra step Shell was told by the US government it would have to go through in 2013, after it exited the Arctic amid catastrophe in 2012, have not been made public.

Only the first half of the third-party audit has been completed, with the second part set to take place this summer, when exploratory drilling is under way.

Last week, a spokesperson with the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, a regulatory body also associated to the US Department of the Interior, confirmed to the Guardian that Shell had handpicked and remunerated its own third-party auditor.

The third-party auditor did meet with BSEE standards, a spokesperson confirmed.

Greenpeace has filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to access the results of the audit.

“Ultimately, we’d hope the president would be more focused on stewardship [of the Arctic] and less focused on what Shell wants,” LeVine said.