President Obama this week is expected to unveil a historic green initiative by announcing Monday that his administration will take new steps to restrict power plants’ carbon emissions.
But the president’s status as a friend of the environment is being challenged by a non-profit that has been stonewalled in its bid for information about another historic move—the administration’s decision to allow oil companies to drill in the Arctic.
The group, Public Environment Employees for Responsibility, filed litigation last week to compel an office within the Department of the Interior to reproduce third party assessments of Shell Oil’s plans to extract oil from the Chukchi Sea.
“The material PEER seeks would answer questions about what steps both [the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement] and Shell have taken to ensure that risks are minimized and response capacity is adequate to meet anticipated contingencies,” the group said in a statement. “BSEE, however, claims it cannot provide a single document until after the 2015 drilling season is over.”
PEER board member and conservation specialist Rick Steiner said that the body overseeing offshore drilling in US waters “should have most of this information at its fingertips.”
“Its inability, or unwillingness, to produce the independent engineering compliance certifications of the safety systems is inexcusable,” Steiner said. He added that the Deepwater Horizon disaster five years ago should entitle the public to all the details it can consume before next month, when Shell begins extraction in Arctic waters. Last Thursday, Shell started the drilling—but not the extraction—process.
“Frankly, this information should have been publicly posted already to give the public some reason for confidence after previous fiascos in this arena,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch.
The Obama administration’s decision earlier this year to allow Shell to drill for oil in the Arctic led to widespread condemnations from environmentalist groups.
Last week, demonstrators in Portland, Ore. for 36 hours blockaded a Shell icebreaker involved in the Chukchi operations. For its role in organizing the protest, Greenpeace was fined $2,500 by a federal judge in Alaska for every hour of the civil disobedience.
Citing reports saying there is “no climate-friendly scenario” for the planet if oil and gas companies drill in the Arctic, prominent environmentalist Bill McKibben said last week that “there is no more contemptible company on earth than Shell Oil.” McKibben, a key initial organizer of anti-Keystone XL pipeline protests, also said that the Obama administration approved of Shell’s plans “to its everlasting shame.”
President Obama is expected on Monday afternoon to reveal that he will be forcing states to reduce power plant greenhouse gas emissions over the next fifteen years–to roughly two-thirds of what they were in 2005. In a Facebook post published on Saturday, the White House called the impending regulations “the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken to combat climate change.”
However, the environmentalist group 350.org, an organization co-founded by McKibben, believes that the rule-making must be judged in a wider context.
“Taking on King Coal is the easy part,” 350.org spokesperson Jamie Henn told Al-Jazeera on Monday. “It’s standing up to Big Oil that will require real courage. That’s why decisions on things like the Keystone XL pipeline, fracking, and Arctic drilling are so important — they’re the true test of climate leadership for this and any future presidents.”
