The U.S. government said it was seeking additional public input on plans by an oil company to build artificial islands to drill in the Beaufort Sea. The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it was asking for comments about a draft environmental impact statement on Hilcorp Alaska’s plans in shallow waters about 20 miles east of Prudhoe Bay. In June, Hilcorp was the lone high-bidder for a lease sale in the federal waters of the Cook Inlet off the state’s southern coast. The lease, the first in nearly a decade, brought in $3 million in high bids from the company. A two-volume report running more than 1,000 pages, an impact statement from the BOEM in August described […]