Alaskan coastal drilling by oil companies including ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) may be further delayed after a federal appeals court ruled the government acted illegally in opening almost 30 million acres on the continental shelf to energy exploration. The Sierra Club and other organizations sued the government after the $2.6 billion sale of development leases for the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska in 2008, saying the amount of oil from the leases was far higher than the 1 billion barrels the U.S. Interior Department estimated in an environmental review approving the sale. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco today concluded the estimate was “chosen arbitrarily.” That meant the Interior Department “based its decision on inadequate information about the amount of oil to be produced pursuant to the lease sale,” the court said in a decision reinstating the lawsuit. “The agency is […]