PrimalNature.org: Big Wilderness: Voices for a Pleistocene Reserve
Administrative
History of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska
In 1923 President
Warren Harding designated 23.5 million acres on Alaska’s North Slope,
northwestern Alaska, as the Naval Petroleum Reserve.
In 1976 as a result of the Arab oil embargo, President Ford signed the
Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act renaming the reserve the National
Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, transferring it from the Navy to the Department of
Interior, and asking that a development plan and appropriate legislation be
submitted to Congress. The Act
specified that “maximum protection” be extended to wildlife during oil and
gas extraction. In 1980 Congress
directed the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to carry
out oil and gas leasing within the reserve.
Drilling of test wells for oil and gas in the reserve began in 1945, and
lease sales have occurred over the past decades.
However, BLM designated several “Special Areas” in recognition of
their environmental value: Teshekpuk Lake (1.72 million acres), Colville River
(2.5 million acres), and the Utukok River Uplands (3.9 million acres); and it
did not begin holding large competitive lease sales until the late 1990s.
For planning purposes it divided the reserve into three areas:
the Northeast with 4.6 million acres of public land, the Northwest with
8.8 million, and the South with 9.2 million.
In 1998 BLM prepared an Integrated Activity Plan/Environmental Impact
Statement (IAP/IES) for the Northeast area and the Secretary of Interior signed
a Record of Decision (ROD), which opened 87 percent of the Northeast area to
leasing but did not allow leasing north and east of Teshekpuk Lake, an area
particularly rich in wildlife. BLM
has leased almost1.5 million acres in the Northeast, and, after revisions to its
plan, is now preparing to sell leases in the Teshekpuk area.
In January 2005 BLM released an amendment to the IAP/EIS, which would have made possible leasing north and east of the Teshekpuk Lake. A lease sale was scheduled for the Teshekpuk area in September 2006, but, as the result of a lawsuit by Audubon and other conservation groups, a U.S. district court found the analysis of the cumulative environmental effects in the amended IAP/EIS inadequate. In August 2007 BLM issued a Supplemental IAP/EIS in response to the court.
The agency released a final environmental statement
and activity plan for the Northeast Area in May 2008. It defers
additional oil and gas drilling on 430,000 acres north and east of Teshekpuk
Lake for at least ten years and prohibits leases on 219,000 acres of the lake
itself and its island, but it allows leasing on other lands south and east of
the lake. The plan could
be reversed by another administration, and conservationists will try to secure
permanent protection for the deferred lands through Congress.
BLM prepared an IAP/IES
for the Northwest area in 2003, and the Secretary of Interior signed a ROD for
the area in January 2004. The plan
designates a Kasegaluk Lagoon Special Area (102,000 acres) and defers leasing on
1.5 million acres near Wainwright for ten years.
However, these areas are already open for seismic surveys.
BLM has already leased 2.3 million acres in the Northwest as a whole.
The South area became the object of scoping for an IAP/EIS in 2005.
In the summer of 2007 BLM
announced that it was discontinuing preparation of the document because of
residents’ concerns that leasing
would impact resources needed for subsistence, in particular the western Arctic
caribou herd, which calves in the area. BLM
noted in its announcement that the area contains only about an estimated 2.1
percent of the undiscovered petroleum in the reserve as a whole.
It harbors an estimated 27 percent of its undiscovered gas, but at this
time no means of transporting the gas exist.
Large reserves of bituminous coal are also present.
The Chukchi Sea is adjacent to the National Petroleum Reserve though not
part of it. January 2, 2008, the
Minerals Management Service issued the Final Notice for Chukchi Sea Sale
193 to be held February 6. The sale would not include near-shore waters, but it
would impact polar bears. The Bush
Administration postponed until, after the sale took place, a final decision, due
January 9, on whether the polar bear must be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
--Mary
Byrd Davis
--last revised
June 5, 2008