Ignoring Protest and Warnings, Obama Ushers in Era of Unprecedented Arctic Drilling

...Even as the full impact of the BP spill was still being determined in the Gulf, according to the Times, Obama took the initiative in clearing a regulatory pathway that would allow oil companies -- specifically a proposal by oil giant Shell -- to start drilling test wells off the Alaskan coast. "The president," write John Broder and Clifford Krauss for the Times, was "writing a new chapter in the nation’s unfolding energy transformation, in this case to the benefit of fossil fuel producers."

Environmentalists were shocked by the report. "We never would have expected a Democratic president — let alone one seeking to be ‘transformative’ — to open up the Arctic Ocean for drilling,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, told the Times.

Last week, more than 1 million people called on Obama to save the Arctic from oil drilling, by delivering a million signatures to the White House, and gathering outside to ask the president to stop Shell Oil from drilling this summer.

“Shell’s ships are already on the way to drill in the icy Arctic waters, putting human life, polar bears and whales at risk in harsh, stormy conditions,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD),

New and Frozen Frontier Awaits Offshore Oil Drilling

"the Obama administration is backing Shell’s audacious efforts to open Alaska’s Arctic waters to oil drilling"

Tremors of Anxiety Over Arctic Drilling

Drilling in the Arctic Refuge

The Arctic Refuge contains one of the most fragile and ecologically sensitive ecosystems in the world. Its environment is extremely vulnerable to long-lasting disturbance because the harsh climate and short growing seasons provide little time for species to recover.

Proposed oil and gas development would occur on the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain found along the Beaufort Sea. This area is considered the “biological heart” of the refuge, and habitat loss that occurs here will impact the entire Arctic Refuge.