http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20492/story.htm
BLM plans to ease oil rules in Alaska reserve USA: April 17, 2003 ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The Bureau of Land Management plans to ease Clinton-era regulations that barred oil and gas development in certain environmentally sensitive areas of Alaska's North Slope, officials said. The rules, imposed five years ago in the northeast section of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, may be overly restrictive and put too much potentially oil-rich territory off-limits, said Henri Bisson, the Alaska director for the BLM, an agency of the U.S. Interior Department. Those rules were applied when the Clinton administration reopened the 23-million-acre petroleum reserve to oil drilling after a 15-year hiatus. They keep oil wells out of vast Teshekpuk Lake, an area near the Arctic coastline that is important to migratory birds and caribou but also believed to have high oil potential. Of the 3 billion barrels of recoverable oil believed to be in the reserve's 4.6-million-acre northeast portion, "2 billion barrels are currently off limits. That's how much oil we think is in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area," Bisson said. Industry advocates praised the BLM plan, which requires a formal environmental study before it may be put into effect. Of all sites within the petroleum reserve, "There's the feeling that this is very high, if not the highest prospective acreage," said Tadd Owens, executive director of the pro-industry Resource Development Council for Alaska. Environmentalists were critical. "To roll back those protections seems premature and risky," said John Schoen, the Audubon Society's senior Alaska scientist for the Audubon Society. A recent Audubon study of the western North Slope report identified Teshekpuk Lake as an area of extreme ecological importance, "valuable for nesting and molting geese, for other water birds and for caribou," Schoen said. The BLM plan for eased regulations in the reserve's northeast section comes at the same time the agency is planning for oil leasing in a separate 8.8 million-acre section west of there. It also coincides with the Bush administration's push for oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a separate area in northeastern Alaska. Pam Miller, an Anchorage-based environmental consultant, characterized Tuesday's announcement as part of a bad trend. "It's an outrage that there's no place on the North Slope that (Secretary Gale) Norton's Interior Department doesn't want to drill," she said. But Peter Ditton, the BLM's associate Alaska director, said the environment may be adequately protected if the agency uses general performance standards instead of the 79 specific stipulations that now apply to oil and gas leases in the area. "Most of our stipulations are prescriptive in nature. They're very specific. They say, Thou shall' or 'thou shall not' do specific things," Ditton said. The review will also consider technological solutions to environmental challenges, he said. For example, the BLM could consider imposing seasonal restrictions on Teshekpuk Lake development instead of banning it outright, he said. The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska lies west of the North Slope's established oil fields. Its eastern border, the Colville River, is about 60 miles from Prudhoe Bay. The reserve was established in 1923 to provide energy for the nation's military forces. Despite sporadic exploration since the 1940s, there has never been any commercial oil production there. Industry interest was muted until the mid-1990s, when Arco Alaska Inc. discovered the 430 million-barrel Alpine oil field on state land in the Colville River Delta. Since 1999, 1.4 million acres in the reserve's northeast section have been leased and the industry has drilled 13 exploratory wells, the BLM said. Two of the most active explorers - ConocoPhillips (COP.N), the successor company to Arco Alaska, and partner Anadarko Petroleum (APC.N) - say they found commercial quantities of oil. They have submitted a development plan that could lead to production by 2008. Other companies with leases in the reserve are TotalFinaElf, Chevron (CVX.N), EnCana (ECA.TO) and BP (BP.L). Story by Yereth Rosen REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Make Money Online Auctions! Make $500.00 or We Will Give You Thirty Dollars for Trying! http://us.click.yahoo.com/yMx78A/fNtFAA/i5gGAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
