Today the Department of the Interior released a final supplemental EIS for Chukchi Sea Lease Sale 193.  The agency’s preferred alternative affirms all the leases sold in lease sale 193.  This is not the agency’s final decision about whether to end or affirm Chukchi Sea oil leases—that will come in thirty days—but it is a big step in the wrong direction.

Jim Adams, Audubon Alaska Policy Director, said: “Until we can effectively deal with an oil spill in the icy, isolated and incredibly biologically –rich waters of the Chukchi, we have no business allowing oil and gas development there.”

The risks of oil development in the Arctic Ocean are tremendous and far too high to allow drilling to proceed.  If a major oil spill occurs, there is essentially no chance that it can be cleaned up effectively.  According to the EIS, there is a 75% chance of a major oil spill if oil development moves forward in the Chukchi.  The EIS also states the impacts could be devastating.  The document acknowledges that a major spill:

• could result in the deaths of large numbers of polar bears;
• could result in many thousands of seals, especially ringed seal pups, dying from oil exposure; 
• could decimate bird populations and result in population-level effects for most marine and coastal bird species that would take more than three generations to recover;
• could kill 60,000 brant and have major impacts on the Pacific flyway brant population;
• could result in “large-scale mortality” for murres, puffins, kittiwakes, auklets, and shearwaters.