…Twice a year Native Alaskan communities like…[Barrow in Alaska] hunt whale…But many here worry the whales will bypass Barrow's waters if offshore oil exploration goes ahead, and they have filed lawsuits to stop it. Oil company Shell has spent billions of dollars to lease tracts of seabed from the US government…But the Obama administration…called a temporary halt after the BP oil spill thousands of miles away in the Gulf of Mexico…Pete Slaiby, vice-president of Shell Alaska [said] "We would not have put the money down on these leases had we not felt we could go in and drill these leases safely…"