CONSERVATION groups based in Alaska have accused the Obama administration of repeating the mistakes of George Bush after it gave the conditional go-ahead for Shell to begin drilling offshore for oil and natural gas in the environmentally sensitive Beaufort Sea.

The minerals management service, part of the federal interior department, on Monday gave Shell the green light to begin exploratory wells off the north coast of Alaska in an Arctic area that is home to large numbers of endangered bowhead whales and polar bears, as well as walruses, ice seals and other species.

The permission would run from July to October next year, though Shell has promised to suspend operations from its drill ship from late August when local Inupiat people embark on subsistence hunting.

Environmentalists condemned the decision to allow drilling, saying it would generate industrial levels of noise in the water and pollute the air and surrounding water. Rebecca Noblin, an Alaskan specialist with the Centre for Biological Diversity conservation group, said “We're disappointed to see the Obama administration taking decisions that will threaten the Arctic.”

Whit Sheard, the Alaskan expert with the environmental group Pacific Environment, accused the US interior department of “again trying to implement an overly aggressive Bush-era drilling plan in one of the riskiest areas on the planet to drill”. The question of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic was one of the controversial environmental issues that confronted the Bush administration. Its permission for exploration in the Beaufort Sea was struck down last year by a federal court on grounds that it had failed sufficiently to consider the impacts on bowhead whales and the subsistence activities of Inuit populations.

The ruling was later set aside and Shell withdrew its drilling plans. According to the national marine fisheries service, there are between 30,000 and 50,000 bowhead whales in the world, with up to 9,000 of them feeding in the Beaufort Sea. Whale experts warn that the bowhead stocks are sensitive to noise and could be driven further offshore by the disruption of drilling. That in turn would affect their chances of survival. There are also fears that any drilling could lead to oil spills.

Shell must now satisfy the authorities that it has met air and water quality standards and safeguards for whale protection before it can begin drilling. The oil company's head in Alaska, Pete Slaiby, said objections had been taken into account. A spokesman for the company added “Shell has assembled the most environmentally sensitive and thoroughly responsible exploration plan in history. That includes a world-class oil spill response fleet that would be on site 24/7 in the extremely unlikely event of a spill.”

— The Guardian, London