By TIM HULL OF COURTHOUSE NEWS SERVICE 15 August 2013
(CN) – A Shell drilling ship need not face federal air quality standards while it explores the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s North Slope, the 9th Circuit ruled Thursday.
A host of environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council, had challenged a permit that the Environmental Protection Agency reasonably granted Shell Offshore in 2011, allowing the Kulluk ship to “construct, operate, and conduct ‘pollutant emitting activities'” in the Beaufort Sea.
The groups specifically objected to the EPA’s refusal to require Shell to monitor “increment standards” to ensure overall air quality within the Kulluk’s zone of influence during “preconstruction” activities. Under the agency’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration program, an increment “is a measure of how much of a pollutant can be added to the ambient air before the air quality will significantly deteriorate.”
Another element that drew protest from the groups was the permit’s exemption of a 500-meter radius surrounding the vessel from ambient air quality standards.
The agency’s Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) rejected both claims, finding that increment analysis is not required for such “temporary sources” of emissions.
Giving the EPA wide deference, a unanimous federal appeals panel affirmed Thursday. The three-judge panel found the federal statute governing air quality permits for temporary sources of emissions to be ambiguous and accepted the agency’s reading.
As for the ambient air quality exemption, the Anchorage-based appeals panel noted that it had decided a nearly identical case while the present appeal waited in line. In December’s REDOIL v. EPA, which involved many of the same plaintiffs and a similar challenge to permits issued to Shell’s drillship Discoverer, the 9th Circuit also bent to the agency and found the exemption “a permissible interpretation of its ambient air regulation and earlier letter ruling.”
“The EAB reasonably concluded that Shell need not analyze the Kulluk’s potential impact on increment before obtaining an oil exploration permit,” Judge N.R. Smith wrote for the panel.
“Similarly,” he added, “as we held in REDOIL, the EPA permissibly granted a 500-meter exemption to the Kulluk from ‘ambient air’ standards.”
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.
