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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jomama: [QB] Not really ANWR, but Oil related. http://www.adn.com/front/story/2603342p-2650022c.html NPR-A options on table HEARINGS: Public can express opinions on oil reserve Thursday. More Information By Wesley Loy Anchorage Daily News (Published: February 11, 2003) With oil drillers effectively locked out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, another mammoth chunk of North Slope tundra is drawing more attention -- and conflict. Like ANWR, the vast National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to the west could harbor lots of oil and gas, and oil companies would like to get at it. But conservationists, particularly those concerned about the reserve's rich bird life, say mixing oil fields and feathers won't fly. The debate could heat up Thursday in Anchorage, when the federal Bureau of Land Management will hold a public hearing on options for opening a new 8.8 million-acre swath of the reserve. "There's a wide diversity of opinion about what is the best way to use the public land," said Curt Wilson, chief of planning and environmental coordination with the Alaska BLM office. Wilson helped draft a 1,000-page environmental report on options for using the reserve's midsection, known as the Northwest Planning Area. This would be the second of the reserve's three zones to be studied for possible oil and gas development. Alternatives range from making the whole area available to oil and gas exploration to none at all. The BLM hasn't yet chosen a preferred alternative. And it won't until Nov. 3, when the agency hopes to publish a final decision. In the meantime, people are encouraged to weigh in with written or oral comments, Wilson said. President Warren G. Harding created a 23 million-acre reserve by executive order in 1923, citing the "large seepages of petroleum along the Arctic coast of Alaska." The coast held plenty of oil, all right, but it was found a good 60 miles or so east of the reserve at Prudhoe Bay in 1967. Oil has since been pumped from other fields on Prudhoe's flanks, but none has come from the remote petroleum reserve. Developing oil and gas from there likely would require hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines to tie it into the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Some apparently successful drilling was done recently in the reserve's northeastern corner. In 2001, oil company Conoco Phillips, the state's top oil producer, announced it had found three promising oil and gas prospects there. Overall, the reserve is hardly pristine. After Harding's executive order, and over a span of six decades, the U.S. government conducted drilling programs in what formerly was known as the Naval Petroleum Reserve. That drilling found only a few small oil and gas fields. Last year the U.S. Geological Survey issued a new estimate of the reserve's oil and gas potential. It likely contains between 5.9 billion and 13.2 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil, with industry likely to move 1.3 billion to 5.6 billion barrels to market so long as oil prices are $22 to $30 per barrel, according to the estimate. It adds that the reserve likely also holds vast stores of natural gas. For the oilmen, a tantalizing feature is the Barrow Arch, a potentially oil-rich geologic vein that cuts across Prudhoe Bay and west through the reserve, including the middle zone now being considered for development. The industry spent $100 million in 1999 for exploration leases in the reserve's first, or northeast, zone. Industry players were disappointed that the Clinton administration excluded from that sale 600,000 acres overlying some of the Barrow Arch because the wetlands are nesting areas for brant, Canada geese, peregrine falcons and other birds. The BLM's environmental study says oil and gas exploration and development would destroy, at most, 1,500 acres of soil and vegetation. Once the public review process is complete, the BLM hopes to hold an oil and gas lease sale for oil explorers in May or June 2004, Wilson said. The state and federal governments would split proceeds from those sales. The public hearing will run from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Thursday in Loussac Library's first-floor conference room. BLM staffers will be around for questions beginning at 5:30 p.m. To see the environmental assessment, visit the BLM in the federal courthouse, 222 W. Seventh Ave., or go to aurora.ak.blm.gov/npra/. For more information, call 907-271-3318. Reporter Wesley Loy can be reached at wloy@adn.com or 907-257-4590. http://www.adn.com/front/story/2603341p-2650018c.html Audubon's alternative NPR-A: Compromise would allow oil and protect wildlife, group says. By Doug O'Harra Anchorage Daily News (Published: February 11, 2003) Scientists with Alaska Audubon have written a "wildlife habitat" alternative for oil and gas exploration in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Proposed as a compromise, the Audubon plan would leave most of the high-potential oil and gas area open to development while blocking or restricting leases in habitat most sensitive to waterbirds, threatened spectacled eiders, caribou and polar bears. "We charged ourselves with identifying the highest, most valuable wildlife and fish habitat," said biologist John Schoen, chief scientist for Audubon in Alaska. "This is our best cut on protecting those areas while being sensitive to oil potential." "We think there's a lot of room for a careful approach that's going to leave a significant area open for oil and gas leasing," added Stan Senner of Audubon Alaska. "We think that's a different kind of note than what's previously been heard from the environmental community. "Usually it's 'draw a line in the sand and no more.' That's not going to work here." Audubon scientists plan to present their alternative as part of the public comment on a 1,000-page draft environmental impact study that will govern the next wave of oil exploration across Alaska's Arctic. The group has also conducted a broader study of biological resources in the entire 23.5 million-acre petroleum reserve, with recommendations for special management areas to protect wildlife. The federal Bureau of Land Management is conducting the study process. BLM planner Curt Wilson said that he has not read Audubon's proposals but that the agency is willing to incorporate new scientific information into a final plan. "We usually get very, very serious substantive comments from environmental organizations, from the borough and state, and from the oil companies," Wilson said. What's termed the Northwest Planning Area of NPR-A holds 8.8 million acres of tundra and lake-dotted wetlands. It stretches from just west of existing oil leases near Teshekpuk Lake to Icy Cape on the Chukchi Sea, from the bluffs along the Colville River to Point Barrow. It includes the villages of Barrow, Atqusuk and Wainwright, and important subsistence grounds. There are deep lakes, nesting sites and rivers with anadromous fish. Across its vastness is woven a complex ecological tapestry populated by waterbirds, raptors, brown bears, wolves, musk oxen, caribou, whales, seals and polar bears. The northeast corner of this area is of particular interest. It holds about 1.1 million acres that federal planners say has high to moderate potential for oil and gas development, depending on the price of oil. Yet much of this zone also contains some of the most sensitive biological habitat. While the three BLM alternatives vary widely in the total amount of area open to oil and gas leasing, two of the three choices would open all or most of this high-potential area to exploration. A third alternative would close all but 2 percent of this area to leasing, a choice that planners say will probably mean no development. "We tried to build alternatives so we cover the extreme range, from full development to almost no development," Wilson said. "That allows us to chose something in between without having to start over again." The Audubon proposal arose from a study of biological hot spots across the entire region, compiled over the past two years by a team of scientists using hundreds of studies and reports. The $125,000 project has produced detailed maps showing wildlife concentrations and habitat use. Co-sponsors are the Nature Conservancy of Alaska and the Conservation GIS Center. For the 8.8 million-acre NPR-A northwest area, Audubon recommended creating special management areas along Kasegaluk Lagoon to protect beluga whales; along Peard Bay to protect shorebird and waterfowl nesting habitat as well as polar bear denning areas; along a southern portion of Ikpikpuk River with high densities of peregrine falcons; and along Dease Inlet with habitat used by birds, marine mammals, bears and caribou. No oil leasing would be allowed on about 2.1 million acres; surface activities would be restricted on about 260,000 acres (mainly Dease Inlet); and special stipulations would apply to about 368,000 acres where yellow-billed loons and the threatened spectacled eiders nest. The conservation proposal would prohibit leasing on about 405,000 acres where it overlaps the high-potential oil exploration grounds. But the proposal would still allow oil and gas exploration on about 65 percent of that land, Schoen and Senner said. "We're trying to come up with a commonsense approach," Schoen said. "We don't oppose development. We want to make sure that development is planned and has minimal impact on biological resources." Doug O'Harra can be reached at do'harra@adn.com and 907-257-4334. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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