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The United States has blocked the release of a landmark assessment of oil and gas activity in the Arctic as it prepares to sell off exploration licences for the frozen Chukchi Sea off Alaska, one of the last remaining intact habitats of the polar bear.
Scientists at the release of the censored report in Norway said there was "huge frustration" that the US had derailed a science-based effort to manage the race for the vast energy reserves of the Arctic.
The assessment was meant to bring together work by scientists in all eight Arctic nations to give an up-to-date picture of oil and gas exploitation in the region. It was also supposed to give recommendations on how to extract safely what are thought to be up to one quarter of the world's energy reserves.
Speaking from Tromso, Norway, one of the report's lead authors, who asked not to be named, said: "They [the US] have blocked it. We have no executive summary and no plain language conclusions."
This month, the Bush Administration drew widespread criticism when it said it would auction off 30 million acres of the remote Chukchi Sea that separates Alaska from Russia on February 6. The sale to oil and gas companies has been rushed through before Congress can complete efforts to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, a move which could complicate efforts to auction off its habitat to oil majors.
A draft of the censored recommendations called on governments to conduct proper research on environmental impacts before signing off new oil and gas projects in ecologically sensitive areas such as the Chukchi.
Comparatively little is known about the polar bear population in the Chukchi because there hasn't been any intensive study since the mid-1990s.
"For a polar bear population already stressed due to massive climate change, these activities could be the last straw," said Kassie Siegel, the climate director at the US-based Centre for Biological Diversity.
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