The US government failed to assess potential environmental impacts adequately when it opened the Chukchi Sea off Alaska to oil drilling in 2008, a federal appeals court ruled on 22 January. In its analysis, the US Department of the Interior used a production estimate of 1 billion barrels of oil, but the court sided with the argument of environmentalists and Native American groups that actual production could be much higher. The ruling could further delay exploration in the region by companies such as Royal Dutch Shell (see Nature 495, 11; 2013).
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