F*ck the polar bears, the walruses, the bowhead whales, the entire damned environment altogether… we’ve got big money to make!

The Interior Department yesterday announced $2.6 billion in winning bids from companies seeking to drill for oil and gas in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea despite protests from environmental groups and members of Congress that oil and gas exploration would endanger polar bears.

Companies made 667 bids for 448 tracts in the 29 million-acre area north of Point Barrow. The winning bids included a record-breaking $105.3 million offer by Shell Oil for one three-by-three-mile leasehold, almost twice as much as the previous high bid for a single offshore U.S. tract.

“This is a tremendous opportunity, and with that comes a tremendous responsibility to Alaska and the offshore area,” said Annell Bay, vice president of exploration for Shell in the Americas.

Environmental groups said, however, that they doubted the area, home to about one-tenth of the world’s polar bears, could be explored without high risks of a spill and damage to the habitat of the bears and other wildlife, such as walruses and bowhead whales.