WASHINGTON — President Obama’s move to open up vast, untouched Arctic waters to oil and gas drilling as he pursues an ambitious plan to fight climate change illustrates the inherent tensions in his environmental and energy agenda.

As the first president to seriously tackle climate change, Mr. Obama has proposed aggressive new rules to cut planet-warming carbon emissions from the nation’s power plants and is pushing for a major global warming accord. He has also overseen an extraordinary boom in domestic energy production that has made the United States the world’s leading oil producer.

The result, until now, has been an uneasy balance between Mr. Obama’s leadership on climate change and his efforts to ensure that the United States benefits from its newfound oil and gas wealth. But in this latest decision, some oil companies and top energy experts agree with environmentalists that drilling in the Arctic is dangerous enough to upset the balance and put Mr. Obama’s environmental legacy at risk.

The oil industry and environmentalists say that the Chukchi Sea, where Shell intends to explore for oil, is one of the most perilous places in the world to drill. Environmentalists and oil industry officials say that a drilling accident among the icy waters and 50-foot waves of the Chukchi could lead to a disaster far worse than the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed 11 and sent millions of barrels of oil spewing through the Gulf of Mexico.