posted
Thought I'd put a different title on it, as this isn't ANWR, and as I've said I think this recieves little coverage in the national Press about how much actual oil exploration and potential there is here outside of ANWR in the NPR.
BLM may relax drilling ban near NPR-A lake PETROLEUM RESERVE: Bird-rich Teshekpuk Lake area could hold 2 billion barrels of oil.
By WESLEY LOY Anchorage Daily News
(Published: April 16, 2003) Federal land managers announced Tuesday they might relax drilling restrictions around a wildlife-rich North Slope lake, saying a treasure of energy might be needlessly off-limits to oil companies.
Geologists and petroleum experts believe as much as 2 billion barrels of economically producible crude oil might be in the area of Teshekpuk Lake, the largest lake in the Alaska Arctic, said managers with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Oil company spokesmen were pleased, but environmental organizations that fought for the protected area in the late 1990s decried the decision.
The 202,000-acre lake is in the northeast corner of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an Indiana-sized chunk of tundra set aside by former President Harding in 1923 for its oil potential.
The reserve has never produced any oil, but one company, Conoco Phillips Alaska Inc., hopes to pump oil from some small fields on NPR-A's eastern edge by 2008. Meantime, that company and others collectively have spent nearly $169 million on exploration leases in the reserve.
BLM's Alaska director, Henri Bisson, on Tuesday said his agency will revisit development restrictions imposed by Clinton administration Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in 1998 to protect Teshekpuk Lake's rich populations of migratory birds and a local caribou herd. Those restrictions prohibited oil and gas leasing on about 600,000 acres, including the lake surface, and barred any surface drilling activity on another 240,000 acres south and west of the lake.
Some of those restrictions might be excessive, Bisson said. For instance, he said, why ban drilling even in winter when migratory birds are not present?
Bisson and other BLM staffers said the oil industry has become proficient in using ice roads, compact drilling pads and other techniques to reduce the amount of tundra disturbed.
"We know that we can safely explore this area without significant impact to sensitive wildlife and subsistence resources," Bisson said. He added, however, that the agency probably wouldn't decide until the fall of next year, after a series of public hearings, whether to relax the Teshekpuk restrictions.
Oil company representatives were restrained Tuesday in their response to Bisson's announcement.
"We are supportive," said Dawn Patience of Conoco Phillips, the leading NPR-A explorer. She noted, however, that a long process will be involved before any new land might be offered for lease.
John Schoen, senior scientist for the conservation group Audubon Alaska, said he was "disappointed and surprised" that lease and drilling prohibitions might be relaxed.
Teshekpuk Lake is a magnet for tens of thousands of migratory geese and other birds, including the Pacific black brant and the yellow-billed loon, Schoen said.
Audubon and other organizations fought five years ago for restrictions to protect the birds and other wildlife like caribou from industrial disturbance, and now the BLM is backtracking, he said.
"To roll back those safeguards would be a mistake and would risk a very, very high-value area," Schoen said.
A major concern, he said, is the incremental spread of oil exploration and development across the North Slope. Some important wildlife habitat areas should be left alone, Schoen said.
Bisson said there might be ways to refine lease and drilling terms to allow more exploration and still protect wildlife.
Anyway, the BLM normally reviews its land management plans after five years, he said. And much has happened in the northeast corner of the petroleum reserve since 1998, he said.
Oil companies have drilled 14 exploratory wells and studied the geology, Bisson said. Based on secret and public seismic and drilling data, the northeast reserve is believed to hold 3.2 billion barrels of oil, with about 2 billion of that in the Teshekpuk area.
The oil is believed to lie in or near a rock fold known as the Barrow Arch, which cuts across the North Slope coast and passes just north of Teshekpuk Lake. All of Alaska's major North Slope oil discoveries have been found within about 25 miles of the arch, including the 429-million-barrel Alpine field Conoco Phillips operates just east of the petroleum reserve.
Peter Ditton, a BLM geological engineer, said the agency assumed the 2 billion barrels could be produced so long as the market price for crude is $20 per barrel.
That's considerably more optimistic than the latest estimate from another federal agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, which last year said the entire reserve could yield 1.3 billion to 5.6 billion barrels of oil at prices of $22 to $30 a barrel.
Daily News reporter Wesley Loy can be reached at wloy@adn.com or 257-4590.
Posts: 2469 | From: Anchorage, AK | Registered: Oct 2001
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