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Bush Administration to Sell Oil Drilling Rights in Polar Bear Habitat

Bush drilling plan could threaten polar bears, panel chairman says

• Bush administration set to sell oil drilling rights in polar bear habitat February 6
  
• House chairman wants to block sale until impact on bears can be determined
  
• Interior Department says drilling is compatible with "stewardship responsibilities"
  
• Proposal being considered to add polar bears to endangered species list
  

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A House committee chairman on Thursday denounced the Bush administration's planned sale of oil drilling rights in a prime polar bear habitat in Alaska, saying its impact on the bear population is unknown.

Rep. Ed Markey, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, spoke out against the White House's planned sale, set for February 6.

He said the drilling should not go forward until the impact of climate change and invasive industrial activity on the animals is known.

Markey's committee heard testimony about how global warming and drilling activity would affect the polar bear population on Wednesday.

"We shouldn't be selling the drilling rights in this important polar bear habitat before deciding how we are going to protect them," Markey said as the hearing opened.

"It seems that every time there is a choice between extraction and extinction in this administration, extraction wins. This must not be the case for the polar bear." 

Markey said he had prepared legislation that would require the Bush administration to protect the animals before drilling could begin.

"In the most thorough study to date, an Interior Department scientist ... determined that under current trends, disappearing sea ice would result in a two-thirds drop in the world population of polar bears, resulting in the disappearance of polar bears from Alaska by 2050," said a statement released by Markey.

"One of the population centers considered under the 'greatest' threat is the Chukchi Sea habitat, according to the study."

That habitat is included in the area where the drilling rights would be sold.

In December, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which included a provision calling for Congress to pass legislation opening access to "domestic energy sources such as the outer continental shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," according to a fact sheet on the White House Web site.

Randall Luthi, the director of the Minerals Management Service -- part of the Department of Interior -- said Thursday in the hearing that his agency "believes that energy resource development can be achieved consistent with the stewardship responsibilities."

"And believe me, we take those stewardship responsibilities very seriously," Luthi told lawmakers.

But Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Washington, pointed out that even in the Interior Department's own environmental impact statement on the matter, it noted that drilling and oil activity in the region had a 33 to 51 percent chance of creating a spill.

"Our overall finding is that due to the magnitude of potential mortality as a result of a large oil spill, the proposed action would likely result in significant impacts to polar bears if a large spill occurred," Inslee quoted from the report.

On January 7, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it was working "diligently to reach a final decision on the proposal to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act," according to a statement on its Web site.

The agency said it expected to reach a decision "within the next month."

Such a deadline would likely fall after the February 6 drilling rights sale.

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Los Angeles Times Editorial:  Protecting Polar Bears

U.S. officials OK oil and gas leases in the Arctic but delay a decision on deeming the animals a threatened species.

January 16, 2008

First things first. The U.S. Interior Department should stick to that useful truism instead of approving oil drilling in polar bear habitat before deciding whether the bears need protection from such drilling.

Last week, the agency's Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it was delaying its decision on whether the steady loss of Arctic ice floes, caused by climate change, should qualify the polar bear as a threatened species. Threatened status would set off various protections -- most important, determining critical habitat for the bears' survival.

Yet there was no delay the week before, when the Mineral Management Service, another arm of the agency, decided to allow oil and gas exploration leases in nearly 30 million acres of the Chukchi Sea off northwest Alaska, prime polar bear habitat that has been among the areas most affected by global warming. The lease sale is scheduled for Feb. 6.

The Interior Department has been all too eager to sell mineral rights regardless of environmental considerations. But this latest sale, combined with the postponed decision on the polar bear, is enough to raise even an oil baron's eyebrows. Listing the bear as threatened would put the Chukchi lease sale on choppy waters; but what if the bear isn't listed until a few days after the sale takes place? Oil exploration might not affect the bears particularly, but the Mineral Management Service isn't the entity capable of making the determination. In fact, no one can make that decision without the kind of study that would be required if the bears were listed as threatened.

Admittedly, the decision on the polar bear is a thornier one than Fish and Wildlife has faced before. It would be the first species listed as imperiled as a result of global warming, and the implications are complex. But the solution is simple. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has the authority and the obligation to halt the Chukchi lease sale until the decision about the listing is made and the necessary environmental studies are completed. This might sound insane given prices at the gas pump, but exploration leases are long-term investments, many iffy years from providing new sources of fuel. Even then, any finds would provide only a very temporary palliative to the nation's energy woes.

Reliance on fossil fuels has been one of the major causes of the global warming that now forces the government to consider the polar bears' plight. It would be too painful an irony if the Interior Department allowed that same reliance to ravage the bears' already diminishing habitat.