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September 2009

Vol. 14, No. 39 Week of September 27, 2009

New OCS leasing plan draws mixed state, local reviews

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell among supporters of proposed Alaska sales in 2010-2015, but others fear for Bristol Bay fisheries, Arctic wildlife; Sen. Begich has some concerns

Wesley Loy

For Petroleum News

Voices pro and con sounded strongly as the federal government closed out public comment Sept. 21 on its proposed 2010-15 Outer Continental Shelf leasing program.

In Alaska, much of the passion centered on the North Aleutian basin encompassing Bristol Bay, some of the country’s richest commercial fishing grounds.

Under the new plan, the U.S. Minerals Management Service is proposing two lease sales in the North Aleutian basin, one in 2011 and another in 2014. The plan also proposes Beaufort Sea sales in 2013 and 2015; Chukchi Sea sales in 2010, 2012 and 2014; and Cook Inlet sales in 2011 and 2015.

Some of Alaska’s top politicians generally endorsed the full slate of Alaska sales.

“I concur with the statement made earlier this year by President Obama that, ‘As we transition to renewable energy, we can and should increase our domestic production of oil and natural gas,’” Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, a Republican, wrote in a Sept. 2 letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. “Maintaining the schedule for Alaska’s OCS lease sale, exploration, and development programs, especially in the Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea, is crucially important to these efforts.”

Opponents aplenty

Leasing and exploratory drilling has occurred in the past in all four of the Alaska OCS regions. But opponents are determined to stop new leasing at least in the Arctic and Bristol Bay waters, and court challenges have bottled up Shell’s efforts to drill on its Beaufort Sea leases in recent years.

In Washington, D.C., on the last day for public comment on the new five-year leasing plan, opponents said they delivered more than 250,000 cards and letters to the Interior Department from people opposed to leasing in Alaska as well as Atlantic waters. At least two protesters dressed as a polar bear and a salmon.

“The nation’s wild fisheries stronghold is at risk,” Kelly Harrell, of the Anchorage-based Alaska Marine Conservation Council, wrote in an e-mail urging bloggers to push for dropping the Bristol Bay lease sales.

The proposed sale area overlaps waters vital as habitat and harvest grounds for salmon, pollock, cod, king crab and other species, leasing opponents say.

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, wrote in a Sept. 21 letter to MMS that he believes oil and gas from places such as the Chukchi Sea “can and will be a significant component of domestic production.”

But he expressed reservations about leasing in the gas-prone North Aleutian basin, noting the government sold controversial leases there in Sale 92 in the late 1980s, only to buy them back. The sales the MMS now proposes would cover the same 5.6-million-acre zone offered in Sale 92.

Begich praised Salazar for making a March visit to remote Dillingham, an important Bristol Bay salmon fishing port, to listen to local concerns.

“Given our country’s needs, I am reluctant to restrict oil and gas development,” Begich wrote. “However, it is difficult to see how revisiting a lease process there, and the inevitable expensive and lengthy court battles, profits our nation. Before moving forward with a lease sale process for a natural gas resource that ranks so lowly on the MMS estimates of reserve potential, we should carefully weigh what we hear from the communities that harvest the fishery resource that much of the nation ultimately depends on.”

A 2006 MMS assessment for the North Aleutian basin estimated a mean technically recoverable natural gas resource of 8.6 trillion cubic feet, and an oil and gas condensate resource of 753 million barrels.

Ample supporters, too

Several local governments arrayed around the Bering Sea have come out in favor of offshore leasing in the North Aleutian basin, provided the MMS imposes protections for fisheries and subsistence resources.

Much of the support stems from a desire to diversify coastal economies heavily dependent on the single and sometimes unreliable industry of commercial fishing.

The Unalaska City Council on Sept. 8 unanimously passed a resolution in support of offshore leasing. Unalaska Island is home to Dutch Harbor, the nation’s largest commercial fishing port by weight of annual seafood landings.

The Aleutians East Borough, the closest local government to the area where Shell has talked of potentially installing offshore gas production platforms, also has expressed support.

As the deadline for public comment arrived, the borough put out a “media alert” listing two dozen organizations — local governments, Native corporations, tribal councils and even a couple of seafood companies — that it says sent in supportive comments for North Aleutian basin leasing.






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