ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Sept 19 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has won two critical permits it needs to drill in Arctic waters off Alaska in the next two years, federal officials said on Monday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it issued Shell final air-quality permits the company needs to operate a huge drill ship and associated vessels in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

Loss of similar permits in a battle with environmentalists and Alaska native groups last winter forced Shell to abandon its plan to drill this year.

A Shell representative said approval of the new permits puts the company on its way to drilling in the offshore Arctic. Shell plans to drill two wells a year in the Beaufort in 2012 and 2013 and up to three wells a year in the Chukchi during the same period.

“The delivery of final permits for our exploration program is another in a series of recent positive developments that adds to our confidence that we will be drilling our offshore Alaska leases by July of next year,” said Curtis Smith, Shell’s spokesman in Alaska.

“We canceled our 2011 drilling program for lack of a usable air permit, so against that background, this is a major milestone,” he said.

The new permits include tightened standards for particulates and nitrogen oxides. Still, they allows Shell to emit more than 250 tons of pollutants a year. Shell plans to be operating in the Chukchi and Beaufort for up to 120 days a year, during the open-water seasons.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands has been in an unusual low-level eruption for two months, raising the spectre of an explosive eruption with little warning, officials at the Alaska Volcano Observatory said on Friday.

Cleveland Volcano, a 5,676-foot peak located 940 miles southwest of Anchorage, continues to expel lava out its crater, a low-level eruption that began in mid-July, scientists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory said.

Satellite imagery shows a lava dome growing inside the volcano’s crater. Satellite data also shows continued heat generated from the volcano, according to the observatory, a joint federal-state organization.

So far, there have been no signs of ash clouds. But those could come with little warning, scientists said.

“The big thing we’re concerned about is an explosive eruption,” said Steve McNutt of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a coordinating scientist for the observatory.

One worry is that the dome could seal off the crater vent entirely, causing pressure to build until it is released explosively, McNutt said. Or the dome could topple, triggering a molten flow down the mountain that releases gas and ash into the atmosphere while lava and rocks tumble, he said.

While Cleveland is one of Alaska’s most active volcanoes — erupting about once a year over the past decade — its long-running lava flow and dome buildup is something different from past behavior, scientists said.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Sept 14 (Reuters) – A portion of Coeur d’Alene’s (CDE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Kensington gold mine in Alaska has been shut in the aftermath of a fatal underground accident last week, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration said Wednesday.

“The partial closure was ordered by the MSHA to allow investigation of the site,” MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere told Reuters.

“It’s just the section where the accident occurred. It’s not the entire mine,” she added.

Louviere said she did not know how long the partial closure would last, but noted that it was required to allow proper investigation of the accident by officials sent to the mine.

“They need to gather up any physical (evidence) at the site where the fatality occurred, and that takes time,” she said. In addition, the mine’s operator must ensure that the area is safe before allowing workers to return, she said.

The Sept. 7 accident killed miner Joe Tagaban, 30, of Juneau, Alaska. He was struck by small rocks and debris that blew through a bore hole during a blasting operation, according to the MSHA’s preliminary report. The accident occurred at the 1,290-foot level of the underground mine.

It was the first fatality at Kensington, a mine that opened in June 2010. The mine employs over 200 people and is expected to produce about 120,000 ounces of gold annually.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Sea-ice coverage across the Arctic Ocean has dwindled to its second-lowest level since satellite records started in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Areas of the Arctic with at least 15 percent sea-ice as of Saturday totaled 1.68 million square miles, slightly above the record-low of 1.61 million square miles recorded in 2007, the center said.

Yet to be determined is whether the reported sea-ice cover will be the lowest for the year. Annual minimums are usually reached around mid-September.

“We’re getting close, but there’s still the potential for further loss of ice,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Ice coverage could diminish either through more melt or from winds or both, Meier said. However, some areas, including those near the North Pole, were showing signs of ice growth, he said.

“Probably there’s a little bit of both going on – there’s melting and refreezing,” he said.

At least one other institution has reported that this year’s Arctic ice coverage was the lowest on record. A report issued last week by the University of Bremen in Germany said sea-ice coverage on September 8 fell below the 2007 minimum.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Sea-ice coverage across the Arctic Ocean has dwindled to its second-lowest level since satellite records started in 1979, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported on Tuesday.

Areas of the Arctic with at least 15 percent sea-ice as of Saturday totaled 1.68 million square miles, slightly above the record-low of 1.61 million square miles recorded in 2007, the center said.

Yet to be determined is whether Tuesday’s reported sea-ice cover will be the lowest for the year. Annual minimums are usually reached around mid-September.

“We’re getting close, but there’s still the potential for further loss of ice,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Ice coverage could diminish either through more melt or from winds or both, Meier said. However, some areas, including those near the North Pole, were showing signs of ice growth, he said.

“Probably there’s a little bit of both going on – there’s melting and refreezing,” he said.

At least one other institution has reported that this year’s Arctic ice coverage was the lowest on record. A report issued last week by the University of Bremen in Germany said sea-ice coverage on September 8 fell below the 2007 minimum.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Four decorated clay disks have been discovered at a prehistoric site in Alaska, apparently the first artifacts of their type discovered in the state, the University of Alaska Museum of the North said.

The disks were found during a summer expedition in Noatak National Preserve, at a site where archeologists have for decades been studying lakefront pit dwellings that date back 1,000 years, officials at the Fairbanks museum said.

The disks are etched, and two of them have holes in the center.

They were discovered when a team from the museum and the National Park Service traveled to the site in northwestern Alaska to make records of previously discovered prehistoric petroglyphs on boulders.

Such prehistoric rock art is extremely rare in interior and northern Alaska, though common in the southwestern part of the United States and other regions, museum and Park Service officials said.

The accidental discovery of the disks may lead to more such finds, said Scott Shirar, a research archeologist at the museum.

“One of the exciting things is that we’ve only opened up a really small amount of ground at the site. So the fact that we’ve … found four of these items, that indicates that there’s probably a lot more there and there’s something really significant happening at the site,” Shirar said in a video interview posted on the museum’s website.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Climbing Mount McKinley, North America’s tallest peak, will be costlier next year under a rule issued on Wednesday by the National Park Service.

Fees for climbers who tackle 20,320-foot Mount McKinley will be $350, up from the current $200, under the rule adopted for Alaska’s Denali National Park.

The same fee will apply to nearby Mount Foraker, a 17,400-foot peak that attracts far fewer climbers but is considered more difficult. Climbers 24 years old and younger will have to pay only $250 under the new rule.

The fees fund the park’s mountaineering program, which provides ranger patrols, climber-safety education, crowd management during the three-month climbing season and rescues and body recoveries.

A total of 1,203 climbers attempted McKinley this year, and 14 climbed Foraker, the Park Service reported.

Fifty-three percent of those attempting McKinley reached its summit, while only two reached Foraker’s summit. Eight climbers died this year in Denali National Park, five of them on McKinley.

Some climbers argued that the increased fee — and fees in general — are antithetical to the freedom they seek in the mountains.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A worker at the Kensington Gold Mine in Alaska was killed in an accident on the job on Monday morning, the mine’s owner said.

A spokesman for the mine’s parent company, Idaho-based Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp., said the miner was underground at the time of the fatal mishap but gave no further details.

“It was while he was working, and he was the only person that was hurt,” said the spokesman, Tony Ebersole. No one else was involved, he said. The company has not yet released the worker’s name.

The Kensington mine, located about 45 miles north of Juneau, the state capital, began production in June of 2009. There are more than 200 workers employed at the mine, which produces about 120,000 ounces of gold a year, Ebersole said.

Mining deaths are not uncommon in the United States, though such accidents are currently on the decline. The Kensington accident is the second mining death this year for Alaska. A worker at the Fort Knox open-pit gold mine near Fairbanks was killed in a fall in June.

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration tallied 14 U.S. mine deaths during the first half of this year, eight of them in coal mines, an all-time mid-year low, the agency said.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Cynthia Johnston)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Hundreds of vampire enthusiasts will sail Alaska’s fabled Inside Passage in a summer 2012 cruise tailored to their interests that combines gazing at glaciers with a late-night costume ball, organizers said on Thursday.

The “Vamps at Sea” cruise is scheduled for late June, which is a time of near-constant daylight in the far north.

“They’ve got curtains and they can block everything out — so it can be as dark as we want it,” said organizer Linda Wolf, president of Los Angeles-based agency Cruises Cruises Cruises Inc, who is herself a fan of the vampire genre.

Cruise groups have been organized around myriad interests, with everyone from bird lovers to marathon runners getting their own boat trips.

Still, the Vamps at Sea cruise promises to be special, said Buckwheat Donahue, executive director of the convention and visitors bureau in Skagway, a historic gold rush town that is on most cruise itineraries.

“This is going to be fun,” Donahue said. “I can’t imagine what people are going to be dressed like coming off the boat.”

The group will sail on a Holland America ship, the Zuiderdam, and will hit the usual ports of call such as Juneau, Glacier Bay and Ketchikan.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – A 22-year-old Alaska woman said on Wednesday she punched a black bear in the face to save her small dog from being carried off and possibly eaten.

Juneau resident Brooke Collins said she hit the bear Sunday night to save the life of her dachshund, Fudge. She said she discovered the bear crouched down, clutching Fudge in its paws and biting the back of the dog’s neck.

“It had her kind of like when they eat salmon,” Collins said Wednesday. “I was freaking out. I was screaming at it. My dog was screaming. I ran up to it … I just punched it right in the snout and it let go.”

Collins said her boyfriend then scared the bear away. “I think it was more startled than anything,” she said.

Collins, a hairdresser who has lived in Juneau most of her life, said she is accustomed to bears and knows how to take precautions around them.

She also knew about this particular bear before Sunday’s attack because it has been hanging around the neighborhood.

In this case, however, Fudge darted out the door before anyone checked the vicinity, she said.