For years, Royal Dutch Shell and environmental groups have been locked in an almost ritualized dance of litigation. Step-by-step, Shell has won federal approval for plans to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean. And at each turn, conservationists have protested that the permits are improper and sued the government to block them.
But last year, with permits finally in hand to drill the first exploratory wells in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas on the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf, Shell didn’t wait for what it called the “virtual certainty” of an 11th-hour suit to derail its plans. Instead, it launched a preemptive strike, filing three suits against 13 environmental groups and asking the court to pronounce the permits valid up front.
