The Minerals Management Service, which oversees federal leases on the Outer Continental Shelf, has spent $300 million on environmental studies in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, officials said. And the chances of a serious spill are low, regional director John Goll said.
"We are absolutely not talking about an Exxon Valdez," he said. "For us, a major spill is 1,000 barrels or more. When folks talk about 50% of [drilling operations] are going to have a spill, remember that anything that puts a sheen in the water is considered a spill. I always say, look back at the record. And it's a pretty strong record right now."
Goll also said that the government had moved to lessen the effects of offshore drilling on the bowhead whale hunt by removing some areas from leasing and limiting oil operations during certain times of the year.
In its opinion, the Washington, D.C., appellate court found that the government had failed to thoroughly weigh the environmental impact of offshore Arctic leasing, and it sent the Minerals Management Service back to the drawing board. The panel also found merit in claims that native Eskimos have a right to seek protection of animals that have been an economic and cultural resource for a millennium.
Endangered bowhead whales -- of which Eskimos may kill a varying quota of usually up to 40 a year -- form one of the backbones of native culture and diet. The hunts, elders say, teach young people a skill that encourages respect and keeps them from fleeing the barren villages that dot the Arctic coast.
There are about 10,500 bowheads, which can grow up to 60 feet long, plying the waters off Alaska's coast. A 2007 survey found nearly half that population living inside the proposed drilling area.
"It would only be a matter of time before something like Exxon Valdez would occur in our subsistence area," said Thomas Napageak Jr., 25, a whaling captain and Nuiqsut's vice mayor.
Some here also worry that the caribou that once could be hunted just outside the village now most often stay miles away. And some of them seem sick.
"This past summer, I saw a caribou that had a tumor on its right hind quarter, and it was the size of a baseball," Napageak said. "A couple months ago, I got one that had green pus on its neck and shoulders."
Even so, Nuiqsut, like other villages across the North Slope, has been lured by oil's promise of jobs and stock dividends.
