Shell claimed at the start of the aborted 2012 drill season to have spent about $4.5 billion on its Alaska Arctic offshore drilling project. This season was quite expensive too, perhaps costing over a billion dollars before this catastrophe. Cleaning up its mess is going to be very expensive. And fighting renewed efforts to keep Shell out of Alaska waters may cost more scores of millions.

On December 21st, the Food and Drug Administration announced that the first genetically-engineered animal ever approaching approval for public consumption — a hybrid Chinook Salmon-Pouty — has been declared to have “no significant impact” on the environment. As of the 21st, the FDA’s tentative approval of this GMO salmon, called “Frankenfish” by its many detractors, entered a 60-day public comment period.

In Alaska, home of a high percentage of the world’s remaining wild salmon, and a state where fish farming has been banned since 1989, the state’s three national legislators quickly responded to the FDA decision.

The activist watchdog organization, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), filed suit today in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, against the Federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). The suit, brought under the Freedom of Information Act, seeks to force BSEE to “disclose records wrongfully withheld in failing to respond within the statutory deadline to Plaintiff’s five FOIA requests.”

PEER, along with other parties, has been trying to unravel what happened in September, in Puget Sound, when testing of the containment dome apparatus Shell hoped to deploy in the Arctic later that month failed catastrophically. Although BSEE responded in November to an FOIA request from Seattle’s KUOW Radio, they have not responded to any of the similar requests from PEER. Here’s an extract the environmental NGO’s press release on the suit:

Since the 8th of August, nothing having to do with the Arctic Challenger project has broken in favor of speeding things up.

At the time, I was probably the only person to publicly claim that Shell might not get it together in time to even drill a single hole this season. Since then, there have been others coming to similar conclusions.

The Arctic Challenger is what Shell Oil claims will be their Arctic oil spill response unit. They are not joking. Unless the problems associated with the hull shape have been addressed, the vessel should not be certified by the Coast Guard for Shell’s contemplated use.

Amnesty International and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) unveiled documents pertaining to the Royal Dutch Shell Oil 2008 Bodo oil pipeline spill that showed that 60 times the amount of oil Shell had originally reported spilling have actually spilled in the ravaged Niger Delta coastal town with a population of 60,000 people.

Edward Teller attends Democratic and Tea Party caucuses in Wasilla, Alaska and asks a few simple questions of members of each group. He asks how people feel about actual policies or actions taken by the US government. The findings may surprise you.

Mitt Romney likely has the LDS community to thank for two of his six wins in yesterday’s Super Tuesday. While there are now entrance polls to verify this fact based on past voting patterns, it is very likely that the Mormon vote is what propelled Romney to both his big win in the Idaho caucus and his narrow victory in the Alaska caucus.

It is Super Tuesday with 10 states voting: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. You can find my primer for tonight here and find part one of the live blog here. Real time results can be found at Politico or Google. To recap: So far Newt Gingrich won Georgia. [...]

It is Super Tuesday in the Republican presidential primary. This is the single biggest day in the primary with roughly 20 percent of the delegates at stake. People are voting in ten states today: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. You can find my primer for tonight here.