Despite a series of accidents and mishaps last year off the coast of Alaska, oil giant Royal Dutch Shell will be allowed to resume its drilling exploration in the Arctic after a U.S. federal court on Monday deemed Shell’s spill clean up plans in compliance with legal guidelines.

The ruling follows a complaint lodged by several green groups including Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, Oceana and the Natural Resources Defense Council who said that the inevitable oil spills in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas would be very difficult to clean up and that Shell did not have a sufficient plan or the technology for such an emergency.

The court decision “allows Big Oil to put this remarkable landscape at risk to oil spills and industrialization.”

“The ruling doesn’t change the fact that, as Shell’s misadventures last year showed, the Arctic Ocean is no place for rosy-eyed optimism,” Earthjustice, the environmental nonprofit law firm who represented the groups, said in a statement.

Judge Ralph Beistline in the Alaska U.S. District Court said the Interior Department didn’t violate the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act or National Environmental Policy Act in approving Shell’s spill plans, as the groups had argued.