Guardian: The sale of licences to drill for oil and gas rights in Alaska will threaten the future of the region’s polar bears, conservationists warned today. The oil and gas rights to drill in 29.4m acres in the Chukchi sea, which were made available by the US government’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) yesterday, have attracted record bids of $2.66bn from the likes of Shell and ConocoPhillips. The MMS believes that up to 15bn barrels of recoverable oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of …