Free Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming by McKenzie Funk Page B

$2.1 billion.
    Before the floor was opened, Luthi tried to answer his own question. “Why? Our demand for energy is going to increase by approximately 1.1 percent a year over the next generation,” he said. “U.S. production is not expected to keep pace. Now, it doesn’t take too much to realize that when you’re demanding more than you’re producing, there’s a shortfall. The Chukchi Sea is widely considered one of the last energy frontiers in America. Now, I don’t believe we should look at it as the last frontier, but rather as a frontier of unlimited opportunity.
    “We understand the importance of the Chukchi Sea to the people who live along it,” he continued. “We consulted with the communities, including the Native villages of Point Hope, Point Lay, Wainwright, Barrow, and the Inyoopit . . . the Inupit . . . I’m sorry, Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope.”
    Someone in the crowd laughed.
    “Inupiat,” Luthi said again. “I always get that wrong. I sat back there and practiced . . .”
    Another man stood to read off the bids—667 of them, another record for the Arctic. “We’ve estimated that this might take four hours to go through,” he said, and he reminded bidders that electronic funds needed to be in a U.S. Treasury account no later than 2:00 p.m. the next day.
    The first winning conglomerate was Spain’s Repsol, unopposed for $75,050. There was no shouting, no excitement. It was a silent auction, with all the bids made in advance. The man opened them; we just sat there. He read in a near monotone—“Block 7011. One bid. Repsol, $75,050. Block 7019. One bid. Repsol, $75,050. Block 6868. One bid. Shell Gulf of Mexico, $303,394”—and the schoolmarms passed the blue folders down the table, left to right. The hall was quiet but for coughing.
    “Block 6154. One bid. ConocoPhillips, $125,110,” the man announced. “Block 6155. Two bids. First bid: Shell Gulf of Mexico, $4,106,999. Second bid: ConocoPhillips, $251,625. Block 6515. One bid. Shell, $508,900.” And so it went. Shell kept winning: One block for $4,105,958. Another for $14,300,435. Another for $31,005,358. Another—and this one got a murmur from the crowd—for $87,307,895. Then another for $105,304,581.
    Two hours passed. We had a halfway break in the lobby, where the activists’ polar bear costume now sat crumpled on a stone bench near the window, next to a trader chatting on her cell phone. The crowd funneled back inside, and the presenter droned on. He read out the numbers in full: “one hundred and five million, three hundred and four thousand, five hundred and eighty-one.” As the total entered the billions, I lost all sense of scale. Shell. Ten million, one hundred and one thousand, five hundred and fifty. Statoil. Two million, seven hundred and sixty-two thousand, six hundred and twenty-two. Shell. Ninety-six thousand, six hundred and three. Shell. Fifty-four million, one hundred and four thousand, eight hundred and fourteen. Shell. Six million, fifty-seven thousand, six hundred and seventy-nine. Shell. Three hundred and seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty. Shell. Shell. Shell. One hundred and one thousand, three hundred and thirty. Eighty-two thousand and eighty-eight. Twenty-four million, three hundred and seven thousand, six hundred and one.
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    ONE COULD ALREADY SEE the writing on the wall: Shell’s shift from the greenest oil company to the oil company targeted by Greenpeace for its Arctic dreams. Its shift from actively pushing for a climate-change bill in the U.S. Congress to quietly recognizing that the government would accomplish very little at all. Its acceptance that the future was starting to look like Scramble. A few months after Lease Sale 193, Shell gave up its 33 percent stake in the world’s largest wind farm, the thousand-megawatt London Array. Within a year, it had dropped all new funding for wind, solar, and hydrogen energy. It began securing government funding in