A coalition of environmental groups and Alaska natives has filed a lawsuit challenging U.S. approval of Shell Oil’s plans to drill off the Alaska coast.

The lawsuit — led by Earthjustice, the Alaska Wilderness League, and the Natural Resource Defense Council — alleges that Shell’s plans to drill (more…)

U.S. government regulators have conditionally approved Shell Exploration’s plans to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea off the coast of Alaska. Drilling could begin as early as next July.

The decision is a setback for various environmental groups and indigenous people, who are concerned (more…)

The remote Alaska Native village of Kivalina has been in danger for a number of years from the effects of climate change.

“Sea ice no longer adequately forms on the village’s coastline, leaving the tiny island—perched on a thin strip of land between a sea and a lagoon—vulnerable to storms and erosion, and requiring relocation.” (more…)

Almost all oil production on Alaska’s North Slope remains shut down after workers on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline system discovered a leak over the weekend. BP, the pipeline company’s largest single owner, has called it a “significant event.”

BP is no stranger to pipeline problems in Alaska. We recently reported that a BP (more…)

A Texas company has announced that it is moving forward with a plan to ship 2.9 billion to 9 billion gallons of water a year from the small Alaskan town of Sitka to the west coast of India. If the company, S2C Global Systems, succeeds in carrying out the shipments, the deal would represent the world’s first regular, bulk exports of water via tanker. The city of Sitka, a water-rich community of 8,600 people located on Baranof Island off Alaska’s southeast coast, is supporting the plan to export the water for a penny a gallon from its Blue Lake reservoir. (more…)

Six years after a scathing 2001 internal review of BP’s Alaska operations found that the company wasn’t maintaining safety equipment and faced “a fundamental lack of trust” among workers, a follow-up study concluded BP had made little headway in addressing those concerns.

The 2007 review, obtained by ProPublica, is based on a survey of more than 400 BP workers and contractors across Alaska greater Prudhoe Bay drilling fields. Three of four workers surveyed said that BP’s maintenance (more…)

(Reuters) – The Obama administration plans to announce on Thursday a suspension of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic until 2011 as a result of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, an Alaska senator said.

Democratic Senator Mark Begich said he had been told by the Interior Department that the Obama administration will announce that consideration of any applications for exploratory drilling in the Arctic is suspended until 2011.

The suspension is part of measures President Barack Obama plans to order in response to the runaway oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (more…)

Supreme Court watchers are hitting the refresh button often as the term wraps up and decisions are released in bunches.

Monday saw a significant ruling for the clean-tech observer as the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to uphold an Army Corps of Engineers ruling that allowed an Alaskan mining company to dump slurry waste into a nearby lake as a permanent disposal method.

(more…)