Donald Trump signs executive order to expand drilling in the Arctic. Because saving the planet is for pussies.

MOMENTS AGO: @POTUS signs executive order to review offshore oil and gas exploration locations. pic.twitter.com/VNPDEyL01K

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 28, 2017

Courtesy of ADN: 

Surrounded by members of Alaska's congressional delegation, President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order that directs the Interior Department to rethink some of President Barack Obama's regulations and decrees that put large swaths of the Arctic Ocean off limits to oil drilling. 

The order requires Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review previously issued five-year development plans for offshore oil and natural gas leases and regulations governing oil, gas and renewable energy leasing in waters of the Arctic and Atlantic. 

The new move holds potentially big changes for Alaska: reopening the option of future Arctic Ocean drilling, a reversal of the Obama-era approach that sought to limit and eventually ban offshore drilling there. 

The executive order only outright rescinds one of Obama's orders, pertaining to the Bering Sea, issued on December 9, 2016. Actions related to the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas from 2015 and 2016 are modified, rather than rescinded, confirming status as a marine sanctuary, but not barring leasing and drilling. In all cases, the Interior Department will have to rework its five-year plan for oil and gas leasing — an effort that will take up to two years. The Interior Department will also review oil and gas regulations for offshore drilling, though the outcome is undetermined.

Oh I think the outcome is clearly determined and that we know the review is just a formality and that the Republicans will start raping the Alaska coastline just as soon as their drill bit Viagra kicks in.

Along with pen recipient Lisa Murkowski you can also see Rep. Don Young skulking in the background. 

I am not sure why Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan was not included, because if Alaska Republicans can agree on anything it is that drilling giant holes all over the state is job one.

I swear the more executive orders this tangerine colored shitgibbon signs that more desperately I miss President Obama.

Obama tried so very hard to protect us, this planet, and our future. And it seems with every stroke of the pen this POS brings us that much closer to disaster.

Before leaving office President Obama protects the Arctic by declaring portions of it off limits for oil exploration.

President Obama in Kotzebue, Alaska.

Courtesy of Phys.org:  

US President Barack Obama on Friday declared portions of the Arctic off-limits for oil exploration for the next five years, dealing a blow to Republican efforts to expand fossil fuel extraction. 

The decision means new oil and gas exploration leasing in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea will not be considered until after 2022. 

"Given the unique and challenging Arctic environment and industry's declining interest in the area, forgoing lease sales in the Arctic is the right path forward," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement. 

The US government made a similar announcement in March, when it removed the Atlantic Ocean from the five-year road map. 

Environmental groups hailed Friday's decision as historic and coming at a key moment, as President-elect Donald Trump has promised to expand drilling for oil and to revive the American coal industry. 

Apparently the decision pissed off Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski which proves that it is a good one.

However it is also a fact that if Donald Trump decides to do away with his ban it is within his power to do so, though he will receive significant resistance from environmental groups and Democrats.

Even with only weeks remaining of his term President Obama is still doing what he can to protect us, and our planet.

Last oil company relinquishes oil drilling leases in the Chukchi Sea.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

Repsol, a Spanish oil company which owned a significant portion of the drilling leases for Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, abandoned 55 of them last week and plans to drop the remaining 38 next year. 

“Repsol is in the process of relinquishing its Chukchi Sea acreage position offshore Alaska,” Repsol spokeswoman Jan Sieving said in a statement. 

The Spanish company joins the rush of oil drillers — Shell, ConocoPhillips, Eni, and Iona Energy — departing the Arctic region after concluding that offshore drilling is not worth the expense or the risk. After Shell spent over $4 billion attempting to develop offshore Arctic oil and completing just one exploratory well, it said it was done in the Chukchi “for the foreseeable future.” This was two years after Shell’s Kulluk rig ran aground and had to get rescued by the Coast Guard heading south attempting to avoid paying more taxes in 2013. 

Apart from one token Shell lease block that the company is retaining to keep the information it gained from its failed 2015 exploratory well, Repsol’s leases were the last blocks remaining in the Chukchi. 

“Last month we figured out that Shell and a bunch of other companies had given up their leases,” said Mike Levine, Oceana’s Pacific senior counsel, told ThinkProgress. “After eight years, billions of dollars, and significant controversy, we’re back to a clean slate in the Chukchi sea.”

Finally.

I always thought that drilling in the Chukchi Sea was incredibly risky to our environment and was very upset then President Obama gave Shell Oil a permit to start exploring for oil there in 2015.  

However I seemed to have underestimated our President, which is something I swore I would not do again, and late in 2015 he refused to issue any more licenses and then sat back waiting for these companies to fail and give up, which they have now done.

So now the pristine environment of the northern Alaska sea appears to be safe.

At least for now. Assuming of course we can keep Republicans out of the White House.

Climate change is causing polar bears to become long distance swimmers.

Courtesy of CBC News:

Scientists are concerned about the discovery that many polar bears in the Canadian Arctic are making marathon swims of several days in search of stable ice as the Beaufort Sea melts with climate change. 

Between 2007 and 2012, Canadian researchers tracked 58 adult female polar bears and 18 young bears of both genders in the Beaufort Sea and 59 adult females in the Hudson Bay region. (Adult males weren't tracked because they often remove their collars and their necks are typically too wide to keep their collars on.) 

They found the Hudson Bay bears rarely made long-distance swims. 

But in the Beaufort Sea, when there was less sea ice, most bears made at least one swim of 50 kilometres or more (a marathon is 42.2 kilometres) – 69 per cent did so in 2012, when sea ice coverage hit a record low. 

In fact, the researchers identified 115 long-distance swims in total during the study, 100 of them in the Beaufort Sea, with a median length of 92 kilometres or 3.4 days. On average, polar bears can swim at about two km/h. 

While swimming, the bears rarely rest, said Nicholas Pilfold, lead author of the study. 

"These bears are going for days without stopping."

You know it appears that somebody owes Charles Monnett an apology. 

Oh and fuck you Sarah Palin!

Another one bites the dust. Yet one more oil company decides that exploring the Alaskan arctic is not worth the trouble.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

Norway’s state-owned oil and gas company, Statoil, announced Tuesday it is pulling operations out of the Alaskan Arctic. 

“Since 2008 we have worked to progress our options in Alaska. Solid work has been carried out, but given the current outlook we could not support continued efforts to mature these opportunities,” Tim Dodson, executive vice president for exploration, said in a statement. 

The company — one of six that recently called for a price on carbon — will be closing its Anchorage office. It is giving up on 16 leases in the Chukchi Sea, as well as partial stake in 50 others held by ConocoPhillips. All the leases expire in 2020. 

“The leases in the Chukchi Sea are no longer considered competitive,” Statoil said Tuesday.

And that is how it goes.

One by one they fall, until the day we are finished with them all.

However this should also serve as a wake up call to Alaskans that our days of suckling at the teat of big oil are rapidly coming to an end.

If we don't come up with viable replacements for the millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars that flowed into our state from oil production, we are going to be in a world of hurt.

Nancy French, channeling Bristol Palin, decides to speak for all indigenous native people living in the Arctic. No, seriously! Update!

So the image up above is of Kylie Jenner, you know one of the Kardashian family members, in her Halloween costume.

She called it her "Eskimo costume" and there was some backlash on social media.

It's not really any big deal to most people, but some people just like to get upset.

However Nancy French saw this as an opportunity to use Bristol's essentially non-relevant, barely  measurable, native heritage to weigh in on the topic in the hopes of getting some attention NOT focused on trying to figure out just who knocked Bristol up most recently.

Here is what she said: 

Well, as a person born and raised in Alaska (born on Alaska Day, no less) who is also part Yup’ik, let me say this. 

I’m not offended! 

In fact, I’m flattered that you think Eskimos looks this chic.

First off to be fair NO Alaska native woman that I am aware of has ever dressed like that.  Ever!

If Jenner were really interested in authenticity she would have dressed more like this.

But of course she was looking for attention, not heat stroke. And that's fine.

What is NOT fine is for Nancy French, a woman with absolutely no native Alaskan heritage to hide behind, to instead use this vacuous simpleton as a vehicle for expressing opinions that have absolutely NO relevance.

For one thing while it might be true that Alaska natives may not find Kylie Jenner's costume offensive, that is really for THEM to decide.

As for the word "Eskimo" that is a non-Alaskan native word that native Alaskans have been saddled with for over a hundred years now. It is NOT typically considered politically correct to refer to our indigenous population using that term.

Which is something that Bristol Palin SHOULD know, but since her mother still brags about "Eskimo Bingo" probably doesn't care to acknowledge.

However once again pasty white Nancy French is NOT an Alaskan native, so she really has no dog in this fight and therefore no opinion worthy of discussion.

Which also brings up the point that even if this were a post written by Bristol Palin (In crayon most likely.) it still would not have any validity because the native people of Canada and Greenland, who have also been derisively referred to as "Eskimo," most certainly DO have a problem with the word.

In short French just decided to not take offense on behalf of not just the Alaska native population, but also the indigenous people of the entire Arctic region. 

Update: Now Nancy is linking to the article as Sarah, that she wrote as Bristol. 

I wonder if this lunatic even knows who she really is anymore?

Obama administration cancels drilling leases. There will be no more drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

The Obama administration took a number of actions Friday to restrict future offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean. 

The Interior Department is canceling two lease sales it had planned over the next year and a half for Arctic drilling rights and denying two oil companies’ requests to extend the time on leases that they currently hold. 

The decision comes weeks after Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of the Arctic for the foreseeable future, saying the little oil it found in this summer’s drilling is not worth the cost. 

The administration said its decisions are based on the current oil markets and low interest in Arctic drilling. 

But it’s also a significant action to crack down on one of the most controversial types of offshore oil and gas drilling that has environmentalists fired up in opposition. 

“In light of Shell’s announcement, the amount of acreage already under lease and current market conditions, it does not make sense to prepare for lease sales in the Arctic in the next year and a half,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement, complimenting her staff’s work overseeing the safety and environmental standards of Shell’s drilling in the Chukchi Sea, about 70 miles northwest of Alaska’s coast. 

Shell’s Chukchi lease is due to expire in 2020. Norway’s Statoil had also requested an extension of a lease expiring in 2017 in the nearby Beaufort Sea, which was also rejected.

Well I guess that takes care of that. At least for the duration of the Obama administration.

And Hillary Clinton has already tweeted that she is opposed to drilling in the Arctic, which means unless there is a Republican in the White House in the near future the Arctic is safe from the environmental impact caused by oil spills.

Well at least from American oil companies that is.

Okay is it possible that we all got played by President Obama?

I mean I got pretty pissed off at the President over the fact that he allowed Shell oil to drill in the Arctic Ocean in the first place, only to see them fail miserably.

And now with this decision it seems he is using that failure to justify restricting ALL drilling in the Arctic. You know, just as if he planned it all along.

Why do I get the feeling that in about twenty years people are going to start learning what was really going on behind the scenes of this presidency and that their minds will be blown when they do?

Shell oil ends its controversial drilling operation in Alaska.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

Shell has abandoned its controversial drilling operations in the Alaskan Arctic in the face of mounting opposition. 

Its decision, which has been welcomed by environmental campaigners, follows disappointing results from an exploratory well drilled 80 miles off Alaska’s north-west coast. Shell said it had found oil and gas but not in sufficient quantities. 

The move is a major climbdown for the Anglo-Dutch group which had talked up the prospects of oil and gas in the region. Shell has spent about $7bn (£4.6bn) on Arctic offshore development in the hope there would be deposits worth pursuing, but now says operations are being ended for the “foreseeable future.” 

Shell is expected to take a hit of around $4.1bn as a result of the decision.

Part of those losses include the 2.1 billion that Shell paid in 2008 for leases to drill in the Chuckchi Sea. 

Which may help to explain why President Obama was unable to block this exploration even though he has been very vocal about his commitment to renewable resources and addressing climate change in a serious manner.

This really should not come as a surprise since Shell really only had until today to complete this initial operation which was focused on finding deposits large enough to demonstrate that this was a financially viable enterprise.

Well this is good news for Alaska, good news for environmentalists, and good news for the planet.