All three members of Alaska’s congressional delegation wrote to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Wednesday urging him to complete an environmental review necessary to allow oil exploration in the Chukchi Sea.

The delegation’s well-placed concern is that Salazar will stall the review and thereby delay the answer to one of the most important questions facing Alaska today: Can offshore oil help sustain this state in the decades ahead?

We can’t answer that question properly until oil companies are allowed to explore the leases they have purchased.

With exploration, the answer could be “yes,” “no” or “maybe.”

Without exploration, the answer will continue to be a simple “no.” While that method of dispensing with uncertainty might satisfy some people, it would be a decision based on a lack of information rather than the inverse.

The environmental review, which a court said must be completed by Friday, is not designed to be the sole determinant of whether the entire Chukchi lease sale was legitimate. The review is one of many technical steps that were to have been completed prior to the federal government’s issuance of the leases. While the court found the government deficient on this one point, it also found the law has been satisfied on every other point that was challenged. So it’s highly unlikely that the findings of this review would nullify the leases.

The Interior Department should complete the review. It should not use this glitch in the process to indefinitely delay the answer to a question of great importance not only to Alaskans but also to all Americans. Nor should it use the glitch as an opportunity to deliver a pre-emptive “no” answer before we have all the information.