North Slope Alaska Natives Trying To Block Offshore Oil Lease Sale - ENN

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Groups in Alaska have sued the U.S. Interior Department to block an offshore oil and gas lease sale that residents say threatens Arctic marine wildlife and the traditional Inupiat Eskimo way of life. The North Slope Borough and the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage Tuesday, claim the Minerals Management Service did a sloppy job in preparing for the Beaufort Sea lease sale scheduled on April 18.

The lawsuit claims the MMS pre-sale studies used outdated information and underestimated likely impacts of development to the environment and the Inupiat culture. The borough and the whalers, longtime opponents of offshore oil development, fear spills, industrial noise and other disturbances could harm marine mammals. "I really don't want to go to court over this, but there are way too many unanswered questions about the impacts of offshore activity on the bowhead whale migration and on our subsistence activities," North Slope Borough Mayor Edward Itta said in a prepared statement. "I wouldn't be doing my job if I just let this lease sale go."

The MMS estimates the outer continental shelf of the Beaufort Sea hold 8.2 billion barrels of undiscovered recoverable oil and 27.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Itta traveled this week to Washington, D.C. to persuade Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and top MMS officials to postpone the Beaufort Sea lease sale pending more studies, but he was unsuccessful, David Harding, a spokesman for the mayor, said Wednesday.

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