Bush to allow Oil drilling in the Aleutians

Prepare for a run on Flaxseed.

Environment News Service (ENS)#anchor1#anchor1:

WASHINGTON, DC, December 4, 2006 (ENS) - Sometime this week, President George W. Bush is expected to lift a presidential moratorium protecting Alaska’s Bristol Bay from oil and gas drilling that was imposed by his father.

The presidential moratorium, banning exploration and production in the Outer Continental Shelf of the North Aleutian Basin was imposed in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound two years earlier.

The area includes the commercial fishing grounds of Bristol Bay, described by Professor Rick Steiner of the University of Alaska's marine advisory program as 'the breadbasket of entire Bering Sea.'
House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, says lifing the moratorium would be a mistake.