Arctic Drilling Undercuts Obama's Global Warming Efforts, Experts Say

It’s been at least four years since President Barack Obama first described what he calls his “all-of-the-above energy strategy,” one aiming for balance between traditional fossil fuels, nuclear and renewables like wind and solar.

Yet two days after the administration announced conditional approval of a Royal Dutch Shell plan to drill for oil in the treacherous Arctic seas off Alaska, critics argue that attempt at “balance” may prove little more than farce.

“This decision illustrates that the administration’s energy and climate change agendas are out of sync,” says Henrik Selin, associate professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. “The context in which this decision was made – energy – was way too narrow.”

The Interior Department had wide latitude – and, environmental groups argue, much reason – to reject the plan. In late 2012, a previous Shell attempt to explore for oil in the region ended in disaster, when a series of mechanical failures, severe weather, stormy seas and poor decisions led to the operation’s main drill rig running aground.

Two years earlier, another exploratory and technically fraught drilling project – the Macondo well – turned into the worst marine oil spill in history when BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 people and spewing more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. About 6 to 10 million gallons – and perhaps much more – is still believed to be in the waterway.

“Just to say that it’s an exploratory well doesn’t mean there’s no risk,” says Michael Conathan, director of ocean policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress and former Republican staff member on the Senate Commerce Committee. “Given the difficulty that Shell encountered and all the problems they had, that was certainly more than sufficient to show the administration that these drilling activities are simply too risky, too remote and at this point they really just can’t be done safely.”

Even the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Interior Department agency that signed off on Shell’s proposal to drill in the Chukchi Sea, estimates there’s a “75 percent chance of one or more large spills” from oil drilling in the region in the next 77 years, according to a February report. Shell, itself, did not dispute the figure.

Yet despite the risk – not to mention the enormous challenge of cleaning a spill in an isolated region known for stormy weather and icy seas – the Obama administration gave Shell a green light.

“What the administration is attempting to do is find balance as to where they’re going to allow oil exploration and development,” says David Konisky, associate professor of public policy at Georgetown University. “Allow drilling but not everywhere, and make some important decisions where they could protect some resources but still allow development of oil itself."

He adds: “That’s the inconsistency that’s really driving some of the environmental groups crazy.”

Obama, on the one hand, has taken some of the most forceful federal environmental actions in history. Aimed at addressing climate change and keeping the globe’s average temperature from rising past 2 degrees Celsius, his administration has unveiled new cuts to power plant emissions, stricter fuel economy standards for vehicles, and proposed tighter fracking regulations on federal lands.

At the same time, oil and gas production, reignited under President George W. Bush, has boomed during the Obama administration. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling have unleashed the highest daily production of crude oil since 1986. Last year, the U.S. became the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, providing hundreds of thousands of jobs, cheaper energy costs for manufacturing and industry, and creating a powerful new lever for U.S. foreign policy. Earlier this year, the White House said it would seek to open the Atlantic and Arctic oceans to oil drilling, even as it set aside other portions of the Arctic for environmental protections.

“Approval of Shell’s exploration plan for Alaska’s Chukchi Sea marks another important step toward the United States assuming a leadership role in the Arctic," Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who has long called for offshore drilling and also opposed Obama's Arctic wilderness protections, said in a statement Monday. "With an estimated 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and gas resources and active exploration by countries like Russia, it’s critical that we move forward as a nation and set the standard for responsible development in the Arctic."

But unlike so many other policy areas, competition between the fossil fuel industry and environmental advocates is inherently a zero-sum game. Policymakers on different sides of the immigration debate might find compromise by strengthening border protections while easing paths to citizenship; those debating capital punishment might eliminate the procedure altogether while also increasing the lengths of other sentences – neither part is necessarily at odds with the other.

Allowing or encouraging the mining and burning of more coal, oil and gas, however, directly undercuts the president’s stated goals of addressing climate change – not to mention directly threatens the very Arctic habitats he’s sought to protect by declaring them part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“Opening up new areas for oil drilling while restricting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and vehicles amounts to tugging in opposite directions at the same time,” says Michael Gerrard, a professor and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. 

As Konisky describes: “There’s no particularly suitable middle ground."

In essencewith climate change already affecting cities and ecosystems around the world, including the United States, whether it be the drought in California or more severe storms in the Northeast, some experts believe it fallacy to treat energy development and environmental initiatives as separate issues to be weighed against one another.

“If your only interest here is to generate more oil, more natural gas, and the desire to become more energy independent, then maybe this makes sense – I’m not even sure it makes sense in that context,” Selin, of the Pardee School says. “But if you’re thinking about the environmental consequences of the climate change agenda and all those surrounding issues, then it does not make sense.”

Conathan, of the Center for American Progress, agrees.

“The administration has made several decisions as of late really trying to promote their environmental agenda and their positive work on climate change – this is a departure from that previous strategy,” he says. “We’re talking about an asset in the most remote portion of the United States which would not be accessible to us at all were it not for the fact that the climate is changing and the ice is melting and the Arctic is declining. So the rush to go up there to exploit issues because of previous industrial access then burning them to add to that feedback loop just seems ironic.”