Trump approved the go-ahead of the Liberty project to extract oil from beneath the Beaufort Sea.
Credit: Nasa

Plans to establish the first oil drilling operation in US Arctic waters have hit an ironic snag – a lack of sea ice caused by rapid warming in the region.

Last month, the Trump administration approved the go-ahead of the Liberty project to extract oil from beneath the Beaufort Sea, off Alaska’s north coast. The drilling would be the first of its kind in federal waters in the Arctic and follows Trump’s reversal of an Obama-era ban on fossil fuel activity in the polar region.

But in order to get to the oil, Hilcorp Energy, the Texas-based company behind the project, has to construct a temporary gravel island about five miles offshore so it can drill in shallow water.

This nine-acre structure requires an expanse of landfast sea ice, or ice that forms each winter and attaches to the coast, which would then be covered in gravel and then concrete. However, a […]