Native Alaskan groups who depend on whaling and a coalition of environmental groups sued the federal government on Tuesday, seeking to block a Shell Oil subsidiary from drilling next year in the Beaufort Sea.
The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope (ICAS), a federally recognized tribal government representing Alaska North Slope communities, asked the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a drilling plan the Minerals Management Service approved in October.
Hours later, a coalition of 10 environmental groups and Arctic communities filed a second action with the San Francisco court, claiming the MMS did not properly evaluate the effects of the proposed drilling, including the risk of a major spill.
Lily Tuzroyluke, executive director of the Native Village of Point Hope, an Inupiat Eskimo community on the shore of the Chukchi Sea, said the ocean is her people’s garden.
“We rely on it for our food and our culture,” she said in a statement. “MMS’ decision to allow Shell to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean next summer recklessly endangers the traditional subsistence way of life we have sustained for thousands of years.”
MMS spokesman Nicholas Pardi said the agency could not comment on pending lawsuits.
Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith said MMS was thorough in its technical and environmental evaluation.
“Shell has demonstrated its ability to operate in the Arctic in an environmentally responsible manner,” he said in an e-mail. “We fully expect MMS to be successful in defending its approval.”
He said Shell had gone to great lengths to minimize the impact of its drilling program, including a voluntary shutdown during the fall subsistence whaling harvest by the villages of Nuiqsut and Kaktovik, installing best available discharge technology and reducing the number of wells.
“These steps were taken after considering direct feedback from North Slope stakeholders,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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