ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) Inupiat Eskimo whale hunter George Kingik follows news accounts of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He cringes when he imagines crude fouling his backyard, Alaska’s Chukchi Sea.
“They’re not ready for the Arctic,” Kingik said from his home in Point Hope, 700 miles northwest of Anchorage. “It’s completely different up here.”
Shell Oil two years ago spent $2.1 billion for leases in the Chukchi, the arm of the Arctic Ocean that the United States shares with Russia, and the home to one of America’s two polar bear populations.