Already stressed by climate change, polar bears are one of the Arctic species that would be threatened by an offshore oil spill.

Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Despite a glaring lack of scientific information about the Arctic Ocean, or effective technology to address a major oil spill, the Obama administration is following the previous administration’s lead and positioning itself to expand offshore oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas over the next five years in its 2012-2017 drilling plan. Region:  Alaska Read more

Beaufort Sea, Alaska. Courtesy USFWS.

The Obama Administration's Dec. 1 announcement to rescind its Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling plans for the Atlantic seaboard and the eastern portion of the Gulf of Mexico near Florida was a bittersweet pill for those of us working to protect the Arctic Ocean and its coastline from oil spills and development. Region:  Alaska Read more

Polar bears, bowhead whales, and native communities are safe from the oil spill devastation that their Gulf coast counterparts are still dealing with. The Obama Administration has announced that they are postponing oil drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off of Alaska’s northern coast until at least 2011. That includes Shell Oil’s plans to do risky exploratory drilling this summer. The decision comes as part of a larger report on the Deepwater Horizon disaster that was delivered to the President by Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Read more