The deepwater offshore drilling moratorium was lifted this week leaving experts at The Wilderness Society concerned about future oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico as well as in other precious waters including the pristine Arctic seas where oil and gas companies have been pressing for access.

The end of the drilling moratorium was announced by the Department of the Interior this week, just months after the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico damaged millions of acres of coastal wetlands and the marine ecosystem of the Gulf.

My life has been forever changed by oil spills. The year the Exxon Valdez ran a ground in Prince William I was graduating from high school. Like all of us, I watch the images of volunteers desperately scrubbing black, oily tar off dying birds, seals and other animals with horror and I knew then I wanted to lead a life that made a difference, that help ensure that this kind of senseless destruction would never happen again.

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.

As I continue to follow the devastating news concerning the oil spill on the Gulf Coast, I am overwhelmed with a sense of deja-vu from the Exxon-Valdez tragedy that occurred in Alaska over two decades ago. It's been more than 20 years, and Alaskans are still recovering from the mess that the historic spill left in Prince William Sound.