The Houston Chronicle
Bloomberg News
Nov. 20, 2008, 2:04PM
Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, can’t drill the deepest offshore Alaskan well after a federal appeals court said the government’s approval of the plan violated environmental laws.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco today threw out the Interior Department’s approval, saying the agency hadn’t taken a “hard look” at how Shell’s drilling would affect endangered bowhead whales and native Alaskans’ activities. The ruling affirms a court order that blocked drilling last year.
Environmental groups and Eskimo villagers claimed that drilling in the Beaufort Sea could harm the whales and fish that Inupiat Native Alaskans depend on. The groups sued the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, which regulates oil development in federal waters, saying the agency failed to do a proper environmental review before granting Shell a permit.
“The agency is not relieved of its responsibility to conduct more specific analysis on how this project will affect the Inupiat harvest of bowhead whales,” two judges on the three-judge panel said in the ruling. One judge dissented.
Shell, which abandoned U.S. arctic exploration 21 years ago, has said it invested $200 million in the project to drill wells in the Beaufort Sea. One well, 14,000 feet beneath the sea floor, would exceed the deepest Alaskan well by 3,000 feet.
Alaska’s North Slope Borough, home to 7,500 people in eight communities, claimed noise from the drilling might prompt bowhead whales to divert their migration route farther offshore, making it harder for native hunters to find the animals. The group also said the project increases the risk of an oil spill.
Lawyers for Shell, based in The Hague, Netherlands, and the Bush administration, which sided with the company in the case, told the appeals court at a hearing in December that studies showed that the drilling didn’t have a significant effect on the whales.
The case is Alaska Wilderness League v. Kempthorne, 07-71457, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (San Francisco).
Copyright � 2008 The Houston Chronicle
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
