RECENT FEDERAL DECISIONS

January 2009

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Shell’s Plans for Oil Exploration Off the Artic National Wildlife Refuge Temporarily Thwarted By Adverse Ninth Circuit Decision
Alaska Wilderness League, et al. v. Kempthorne, et al., ___F.3d___

On November 20, 2008, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the Mineral Management Service’s (MMS) approval of an exploratory plan allowing Shell Offshore Inc. to drill offshore exploratory oil wells in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. The court found that MMS had failed to take a “hard look” at the potential significant impacts of Shell’s exploratory activities on endangered bowhead whales and the Inupiat who depend on the whales for subsistence. The court remanded the plan to MMS, directing the agency to conduct the requisite “hard look” analysis required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).