Shell drops legal attempt to extend offshore lease terms in the Arctic
Author: Yereth Rosen: 24 June 2016
Months after abandoning its plans for oil exploration in Arctic waters off Alaska, Royal Dutch Shell has dropped its legal effort to hold onto those offshore leases.
Shell notified the Interior Department it will no longer pursue its appeals of a decision that denied extension of the company’s oil leases in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska. The department’s Board of Land Appeals on Thursday granted Shell’s request and dismissed the case.
The move adds finality to the company’s expensive but failed campaign to convert Arctic waters off Alaska into a new oil-producing region. Shell says it spent over $7 billion on the effort, but the company managed to drill only one well to completion and the top sections of two others. It was beset with problems, most notably the December 31, 2012, grounding and wreck of one of its drill ships, the Kulluk.
Shell has already given up the bulk of its leases.
The company this spring relinquished all but one of its Chukchi leases, eight years after spending more than $2 billion to acquire them in a record-breaking federal lease sale. The only Chukchi lease Shell will hold, the site where it drilled a well last year, is scheduled to expire in 2020.
Shell still holds 64 leases in the Beaufort Sea, either outright or in partnership with other companies, according to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Those leases were acquired for a combined $84 million in sales held in 2005 and 2007. They are scheduled to expire as early as next summer, though expiration dates vary, according to BOEM.
The now-withdrawn appeal sought to reverse an Oct. 16 decision by the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. That agency denied Shell’s efforts to put its Chukchi and Beaufort leases into suspension, a status that would had extended lease terms for five years.
ConocoPhilips, another company with offshore Arctic ambitions, has withdrawn a similar legal appeal.
ConocoPhilips, which submitted a Chukchi exploration plan but never got to the point of drilling, in late 2013 asked BSEE to extend its Chukchi leases. The agency in March 2014 denied the request, and ConocoPhillips appealed that decision.
But ConocoPhillips in April relinquished its Chukchi leases, making the appeal moot. The Board of Land Appeals on June 6 granted ConocoPhillips’ motion to dismiss the case.
Other companies — including Statoil, Eni and Repsol — have also relinquished their Chukchi leases, leaving the single Shell-held tract as the only active lease in the basin.
Even though it will no longer look for oil, Shell still has work to do at its drill sites. The company is required to remove 43 anchors and related equipment it left at prospects in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas “in anticipation of activities that are no longer planned,” BSEE spokesman Guy Hayes said in an email.
Anchor removal and site-clearance work is scheduled for July and August. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has reviewed Shell’s plan to accomplish that, Hayes said.
Yereth Rosen has been a journalist in Alaska since 1987. For most of that time, she was the sole Alaska-based reporter for Reuters. She has been reporting on energy issues, the environment, politics and all things Alaska from oil spills to sled-dog races. She enjoys running, skiing and other outdoors pursuits. She lives in Anchorage with her family.
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.
