August, 04 2011, 05:40pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Holly Harris, Earthjustice (907) 500-7133
Rebecca Noblin, Center for Biological Diversity (907) 274-1110
Carole Holley, Pacific Environment (907) 277-1029
Timothy McHugh, Ocean Conservancy (202) 351-0492
Bob Keefe, Natural Resources Defense Council (202) 289-2373
Lois Epstein, The Wilderness Society (907) 748-0448
Virginia Cramer, Sierra Club (804) 519-8449
Robert Thompson, REDOIL (907) 640-6119
Susan Murray, Oceana (907) 586-4050
Caitlin Leutwiler, Defenders of Wildlife (202) 772-3226
Pamela Miller, Northern Alaska Environmental Center (907) 452-5021, x24
Emilie Surrusco, Alaska Wilderness League (202) 544-5205
Matt Farrauto, World Wildlife Fund (202) 660-3136
Feds Ignore Risks and Green Light Shell Drilling in Arctic Ocean
Agency continues to rubber-stamp dangerous offshore drilling; Scientists agree more data needed to understand the effects of oil development
ANCHORAGE, Alaska
The U.S. Department of the Interior took a dangerous and disappointing leap towards drilling in the remote and fragile waters of America's Arctic Ocean today. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) approved a plan by Shell Oil to conduct the first drilling in the harsh and remote Arctic Ocean since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Under this plan, Shell would start drilling in the Beaufort Sea in summer 2012.
Shell's drilling risks a major oil spill, and neither Shell nor the government could respond adequately to such a catastrophe. It risks harming the endangered bowhead whale, a species central to Alaska Native subsistence traditions. Today's decision to rubber-stamp Shell's drilling ignores many of the lessons of the Gulf tragedy and the recommendations of government scientists and puts the Arctic Ocean and its coastal communities at great risk.
BOEMRE approval of Shell's drilling plan is silent as to the agency's assessment of Shell's oil spill plan. BOEMRE should not have approved Shell's drilling plan without an adequate, approved oil spill plan demonstrating Shell's ability to cleanup an oil spill in the Arctic's icy waters. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the National Oil Spill Commission identified "the failure to plan effectively for a large-scale, difficult-to-contain spill" in the Arctic as one of the "three critical issues or gaps in the government's existing response capacity." As Commandant Admiral Robert Papp admitted to members of Congress last week, the federal government currently has "zero" spill response capability in the Arctic. Today BOEMRE ignored these concerns and approved Shell's drilling despite an oil spill plan that:
- Assumes that Shell can recover an unprecedented 95 percent of oil spilled in Arctic water using mechanical containment and recovery efforts (like booms and skimmers), despite the fact that such efforts only recovered 8 percent of oil after the Exxon Valdez spill, and only 5 percent of oil after the Deepwater Horizon spill;
- Ignores the fact that the most recent oil spill response drill in the Beaufort Sea described mechanical cleanup efforts in icy conditions as a "failure;" a video of this drill obtained by Oceana shows how ineffective mechanical recovery efforts are in Arctic waters; and,
- Only plans for a "worst case" spill in relatively warm and ice-free August conditions despite the fact that Shell wants to drill through October, when ice, darkness and bad weather prevail.
Additionally, BOEMRE's approval of Shell's drilling plan does not resolve the potential for other significant impacts to the Arctic environment. In late June, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released a comprehensive assessment of existing scientific data on the effects of oil and gas development in America's Arctic Ocean. The USGS report reinforces what scientists inside and outside the government have been saying for years--we need a basic understanding of the Arctic Ocean ecosystem before we can drill there. What we do know is that Shell's planned drilling is directly in the fall migration path of endangered bowhead whales and could block them from reaching an important feeding and resting area. Shell estimates close to 5,600 migrating bowhead whales, almost half the population, could be exposed to sound and disturbance from the drilling and icebreaking that could cause them to change their behavior and avoid the feeding area. This could harm the population, particularly mothers and young calves, and could affect Alaska Native communities that rely on the bowhead whale and other species to sustain their subsistence way of life.
"This is a disaster waiting to happen, but still BOEMRE is moving forward with Arctic Ocean drilling," said Earthjustice attorney Holly Harris. "Scientific integrity and government accountability took their familiar back seat to oil company profits and power today. BOEMRE's decision to disregard science and gamble with a region that is crucial to endangered bowhead whales, seals, polar bears and other marine wildlife and that Native subsistence communities rely upon so heavily is inexcusable. Today's decision is nothing more than the administration's decision to roll the dice with the Arctic."
"The Obama administration continues its policy of selling off the environment and through that, Alaska Native peoples, to the highest bidder. We know that there's no way to clean up an oil spill in the Arctic. The Department of Interior knows it too. Approving Shell's exploration plan for the Beaufort Sea is a completely irrational decision, driven by industry greed and politicians rather than science and the health of people and the environment," said Carole Holley, Alaska program co-director with Pacific Environment.
"Today's announcement is proof that all of Secretary Salazar's promises of reform after the Deepwater Horizon amount to nothing. This Administration is as willing as ever to rubber stamp dangerous drilling plans in the Arctic Ocean," said Rebecca Noblin, Alaska director with the Center for Biological Diversity.
"We've already watched oil spreading over Prince William Sound. Last summer we watched it gush into the Gulf of Mexico. If we fail to act on the lessons learned from these tragedies, we could soon find ourselves in Alaska's Arctic, watching another disaster unfold," said Andrew Hartsig, Director of Ocean Conservancy's Arctic Program. "A comprehensive Arctic research program is needed to promote informed decision-making on oil and gas activities and to measure and monitor impacts on Arctic ecological resources. The necessary work can begin now, and it can be conducted within a reasonable period of time. With that information in hand, we can make no-regrets choices for our Arctic seas."
"Everyone from the Coast Guard to local community leaders has said they are ill-equipped and unable to properly respond to an oil spill in the Arctic, yet now we are letting Shell move forward with drilling in severe weather conditions in America's most pristine and unique frontier," said Chuck Clusen, director of Alaska projects for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This is either the height of irresponsibility or ignorance, but either way it should be stopped."
"Because Congress and the Obama Administration have not implemented many significant post-BP spill reforms, the public is not confident that everything is being done that can be done to prevent major spills in the Arctic. Shell's word that the company is trying to prevent spills is not good enough," said Lois Epstein, an engineer and Arctic Program Director at The Wilderness Society.
"This decision is bad for Arctic wildlife, such as polar bears and bowhead whales, and bad for the people of the Arctic who rely on these animals for their way of life. Instead of moving forward with drilling in the amazing oceans and wild lands of America's last frontier, we should be investing in ways to make our cars and trucks go further on a tank of gas and move beyond oil," said Dan Ritzman, Alaska Program Director for the Sierra Club's Resilient Habitats campaign.
"REDOIL, Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands, is in opposition to the exploration activities of Shell Oil which have been approved by BOEMRE. We take this position as a means to protect indigenous culture. The Inupiat culture has thrived for thousands of years. We have a close relationship with the bowhead whales and marine life of our region. Climate change is happening. The proposed activities, which lack a credible plan to deal with oil spills, if allowed, can have a devastating effect on our already stressed ecosystem. Our ecosystem and culture should not be put in jeopardy for the profit of a foreign oil giant," said Robert Thompson, Inupiat resident of Kaktovik and the Chairman of REDOIL.
"It is time for the Obama administration to commit to the truth about an Arctic oil spill," Oceana Pacific Senior Director, Susan Murray said. "The American public should no longer be given misinformation, if a spill will be impossible to clean up in the Arctic that needs to be stated."
"Just this June, the USGS reported gaping holes in our understanding of the Arctic Ocean, yet the administration ignores these realities by declaring that offshore drilling would have no significant impact on this fragile marine environment," said Sierra Weaver, attorney for Defenders of Wildlife. "By putting Shell one step closer to dangerously risky drilling, the administration puts the wildlife and people that depend on the fragile Arctic ecosystem on thin ice."
"Shell's oil drilling risks major spills that could devastate nearby coasts, including our nation's treasured Arctic National Wildlife Refuge roughly a dozen miles away," said Pamela A. Miller, Arctic Program Director, Northern Alaska Environmental Center in Fairbanks, Alaska. "The toxic pollution and noisy disturbance from the exploration wells threaten refuge resources dependent upon marine and nearshore estuary waters, as well as surrounding coastal habitats so vital to polar bears, migratory birds, caribou, Alaska Native subsistence, and recreation. Our preeminent wilderness refuge deserves better care than the offshore agency has shown."
"Shell's oil spill plans are full of inadequacies and falsehoods. For example, Shell assumes they can clean up 95 percent of the oil spilled using mechanical recovery, even though in the Exxon Valdez only had 8 percent of the oil was recovered, in Deepwater Horizon, it was 3 percent," said Leah Donahey, Western Arctic and Oceans Program Director, Alaska Wilderness League. "Conditional approval of Shell's Beaufort exploration plan with no way to clean up a spill in the Arctic's pristine, marine environment is unconscionable."
"Drilling for oil in the America's pristine Arctic comes at unbearable costs, in risk, in real dollars and in terms of irreversible damage to the environment," said Bill Eichbaum, Vice President for Marine and Arctic Policy at WWF."We are disappointed in the Department of Interior for ignoring the findings of the President's Oil Spill Commission report, for rewarding insufficient planning and for capitulating to corporate interests. Arctic weather conditions would actually prevent any response for a significant period of time. Did we really learn nothing from Deepwater Horizon disaster?"
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Trump administration immigration officials reportedly dismissed Ward Sakeik's ordeal as a "sob story."
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A newlywed Palestinian woman from Texas released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention earlier this week says she was shackled for long periods, denied food and water, and subjected to other human rights abuses during nearly five months in ICE custody—all because she is a stateless person.
Ward Sakeik, 22, was born in Saudi Arabia to Palestinian parents from Gaza. Because Saudi Arabia does not grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreign nationals, Sakeik was officially stateless when her family legally emigrated to the United States when she was 8 years old.
“I was moved around like cattle.”
Ward Sakeik, US college graduate and homeowner, speaks out following 140 days in ICE hellhole pic.twitter.com/bNTgs7362h
— World Socialist Web Site (@WSWS_Updates) July 5, 2025
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After graduating high school and the University of Texas, Arlington, starting a wedding photography business, marrying a U.S. citizen, and beginning the process of obtaining a green card, Sakeik and her husband went on their honeymoon in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She was detained shortly after arriving back in the United States after Customs and Border Protection agents flagged her for flying over international waters—a move that Department of Homeland Security officials said violated immigration policy.
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Sakeik said unhygienic conditions at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas—where an ICE officer was shot in the neck during a Friday evening attack—caused widespread illness among detainees.
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Sakeik said she now plans to advocate on behalf of women and girls imprisoned by ICE.
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As the death toll from catastrophic flooding in Texas continued to rise, climate scientists this weekend underscored the link between more frequent and severe extreme weather events and the worsening climate emergency caused primarily by humans burning fossil fuels.
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Many studies have confirmed that human-caused climate change is making the heaviest short-term rainfall events more intense, largely by warming the world's oceans and thus sending more water vapor into the atmosphere that can fuel heavy rain events. Sea surface temperatures this week have been as much as 1°F below the 1981-2010 average for early July in the western Gulf [of Mexico] and Caribbean, but up to 1°F above average in the central Gulf. Long-term human-caused warming made the latter up to 10 times more likely, according to the Climate Shift Index from Climate Central.
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It’s hard to make the Texas flood tragedy worse, except to know that on the same day Trump signed a bill to stop our efforts to defeat the climate change that is causing increased frequency of disastrous floods. And giving us more expensive electricity. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/c...
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— Governor Jay Inslee (@govjayinslee.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Instead of taking action to combat the planetary emergency, the Trump administration is ramping up fossil fuel production while waging war on clean energy and climate initiatives. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by Trump on Friday slashes the tax credits for electric vehicles and other renewable technologies including wind and solar energy that were a cornerstone of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.
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27 Arrested for Defying UK Ban on Nonviolent Pro-Palestine Group
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Metropolitan Police arrested at least 27 protesters who gathered in central London on Saturday to publicly support Palestine Action, a nonviolent direct action group now officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.K. government.
According to Middle East Eye, Palestine defenders including 83-year-old Rev. Sue Parfitt, a former government attorney, an emeritus professor, and health workers gathered by a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square, where they held signs reading, "I OPPOSE GENOCIDE, I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION."
Members of the group Defend Our Juries informed Metropolitan Police of their plan prior to the demonstration.
"If we cannot speak freely about the genocide that is occurring... democracy and human rights in this country are dead."
"We would like to alert you to the fact we may be committing offenses under the Terrorism Act tomorrow, Saturday 5 July, in Parliament Square at about 1pm," the group said in an open letter to Met Commissioner Mark Rowley.
"If we cannot speak freely about the genocide that is occurring, if we cannot condemn those who are complicit in it and express support for those who resist it, then the right to freedom of expression has no meaning, and democracy and human rights in this country are dead," the letter argues.
Parfitt told Novara Media that members of Defend Our Juries were "testing the law."
"I know that we are in the right place doing the right thing," she said. "...We cannot be bystanders."
"We are losing our civil liberties, we must stop that for everybody's sake," Parfitt said in a separate interview with The Guardian.
Prior to his arrest, Defend Our Juries member Tim Crosland, the former government lawyer, told The Guardian that "what we're doing here as a group of priests, teachers, health workers, human rights lawyers [is] we're refusing to be silenced."
"Because it goes to the core of what we believe in: that we oppose genocide—I didn't think that was that controversial—and we support the people who resist genocide," he added. "In theory we are now terrorist supporters and can go to prison for 14 years, which is kind of crazy. I think what we are here to do is just expose the craziness of that."
Crosland said as he was being arrested, "This is what happens in modern day Britain for opposing genocide, it's quite something isn't it?"
A bystander told Novara Media: "I just feel disgusted by this government. I voted for them and they're now arresting people who are calling for a genocide to end. And this is a Labour government, they're meant to have left-wing roots."
Members of the group Defend Our Juries publicly declare their opposition to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and their support for the proscribed group Palestine Action while Metropolitan Police officers look on before arresting them during a July 4, 2025 demonstration in London. (Photo: Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images)
In a statement, Defend Our Juries sarcastically said that "we commend the counter-terrorism police for their decisive action in protecting the people of London from some cardboard signs opposing the genocide in Gaza and expressing support for those taking action to prevent it."
"It's a relief to know that counter-terrorism police have nothing better to do," the group quipped.
Last week, British lawmakers voted to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist group after some of its members vandalized two aircraft at a Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire on June 20. The group—which was founded in 2020 and has also vandalized U.S. President Donald Trump's golf course in Turnberry, Scotland—is known for taking direction action against companies that supply weapons to Israel, which is accused of genocide in an ongoing International Court of Justice case concerning the war on Gaza.
On June 23, U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans to proscribe the group under Section 3 of the Terrorism Act of 2000, introduced under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and widely criticized for its overbroad definition of terrorism. The House of Commons voted 385-26 Wednesday in favor of banning Palestine Action and the House of Lords approved the designation Thursday without a vote.
Palestine Action tried to delay the ban via legal action. However, the High Court on Friday denied the group's appeal for interim relief was denied on Friday, a decision that was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
The nonviolent group is now on the same legal footing in Britain as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Joining or supporting Palestine Action is now punishable by up to 14 years behind bars.
At midnight, Palestine Action will be proscribed under the Terrorism Act.Their real “crime”? Exposing the UK’s role in arming Israel’s genocide.This is a dark day for our democracy.Criminalising non-violent resistance won’t silence the truth.We are all Palestine Action 🇵🇸
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— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana.bsky.social) July 4, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Earlier this month, a group of United Nations experts urged the U.K. government to not ban Palestine Action.
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The U.N. experts warned that under the ban, "individuals could be prosecuted for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and opinion, assembly, association, and participation in political life."
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Hundreds of jurists, artists and entertainers, and others have also decried the ban on Palestine Action.
"Palestine Action is intervening to stop a genocide. It is acting to save life. We deplore the government's decision to proscribe it," Artists for Palestine U.K.—whose members include Tilda Swinton, Paul Weller, Steve Coogan, and others—wrote in a statement last month.
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