Drill baby drill… US announces that some Arctic waters will be opened to drilling.

Details will be released Thursday, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters the idea is to adopt “targeted leasing” — opening some areas in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas for drilling while protecting others critical for native subsistence and ecosystem health.
Shell is awaiting the final permits to explore in the region this summer, and on Tuesday said a device to cap any spill was successfully tested in waters off Seattle. “The capping stack was deployed to a depth consistent with the shallow water scenario we will encounter off the coast of Alaska,” the oil giant said in a statement.

How the industry prepares for spills has come under greater scrutiny since the 2010 BP oil spill disaster, where the containment system failed.
Environmentalists oppose drilling in America’s Arctic due to the sensitive ecosystem it provides for polar bears, walruses, whales and seals.

“There is no viable way to clean up oil spilled into the Arctic Ocean,” Kristen Miller of the Alaska Wilderness League said in a statement. “The Arctic is perhaps the most extreme region on the planet with subzero temperatures, hurricane force storms and long periods of darkness. Spill response capacity is practically nonexistent in these remote, icy waters — the nearest Coast Guard station is more than 1,000 miles away.”
Shell is required to have a flotilla of spill response boats should its capping system fail, and Salazar said no commercial drilling would proceed if Interior concludes that spills cannot be contained.