Offshore staff
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The US Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement has released its court ordered Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the Chukchi Sea Oil and Gas Lease Sale 193 of February 2008.
BOEMRE says the SEIS addresses all the concerns of the US District Court in Alaska, and contains added public comment and a new analysis of the impact from a hypothetical “very large oil spill.”
A Federal Register notice of the SEIS is scheduled for publication Aug. 26 at which time BOEMRE will begin accepting public comments. Comments registered before Sept. 26 will be included in the Secretary of Interior’s decision whether to affirm, modify, or cancel the lease sale.
Shell paid $2.1 billion for Chukchi Sea leases and has submitted a plan to drill as many as six wells in the area by 2013, but the plan is on hold pending resolution of the legal issues.
A copy of the SEIS is available at http://alaska.boemre.gov/ref/EIS_EA/2011_041_FSEIS/2011_041x.htm .
08/19/2011
