On the recordFebruary 17, 2011
Beginning in 2005, the Shell Oil Company purchased leases in the Beaufort and the Chukchi Seas located within the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf. The company paid over $2.1 billion for these lease rights, a reflection of the potentially vast reserves off of Alaska's coast. Shell applied for air permits from the EPA for its Beaufort leases in 2006 and for the Chukchi in 2008. The company went through a lengthy and burdensome administrative process. Shell's permits were initially approved, but subsequently overturned by the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board. Last year, the Appropriations Committee addressed the problem by including language in the FY 2010 conference report specifically directing the agency to allocate sufficient funds and personnel to process the OCS permits in a timely manner. This simply did not happen. The company is effectively at square one after spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours. Shell announced just this month that it had cancelled plans for drilling in the Arctic in the 2011 drilling season, which is a very short drilling season. They have spent millions on this and done everything by the book. And the appeals board has decided that because they should have foreseen that the rules were going to change, that they shouldn't have issued these air permits. I think it's an overreach by the EPA and by the appeals board, and I support this amendment and would encourage my colleagues to vote for it.
