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Group protests dropping gas from Chukchi EIS
Alan Bailey Petroleum News
A press release issued by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility on Jan. 17 accused the U.S. Minerals Management Service of withholding what PEER said were plans by Shell for an LNG facility from consideration within the environmental impact statement for Chukchi lease sale 193, scheduled for Feb. 6. MMS issued the EIS in May 2007.
In fact, the executive overview of the EIS states “natural gas discoveries in the Arctic OCS are unlikely to be developed until a gas-transportation system from the North Slope to outside markets is operational and has the capacity to accept additional gas supplies from new fields. Other gas-transportation strategies (e.g. liquefied natural gas) were not considered to be as feasible or economically attractive as an overland pipeline system to U.S. markets.”
In a Jan. 22 interview MMS Alaska Regional Director John Goll told Petroleum News that MMS is not obliged to consider all possible development scenarios suggested during the scoping phase of an EIS — the agency need only include within an EIS scenarios that are “reasonably foreseeable.” For a particular scenario to be reasonably foreseeable MMS experts would have to understand how that scenario could work in practice, Goll said.
MMS scoping discussions for the sale 193 EIS occurred in 2005, he said.
“The experts … on our staff thought that for this first sale on the Chukchi we did not necessarily see gas as being reasonably foreseeable at that time,” Goll said. “Following what most major oil provinces go through, developing oil first and using gas for reinjection to keep the fields going.”
Exports not allowed Goll also said that MMS views the export of LNG from the Chukchi as improbable because LNG exports from the U.S. outer continental shelf are not allowed under the terms of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
“So the question would be: where can it go,” Goll said. “Today we still have no viable LNG facility on the West Coast of the United States. So again, even today, we would see that as not reasonably foreseeable — you’d have to get an exemption from Congress and the President in order to export it.”
Goll also commented that the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act allows for phasing of oil and gas development. If somewhere down the road somebody ends up proposing to develop gas, MMS would do a further environmental analysis at that stage, he said.
Shell for its part says that it’s too early to say what hydrocarbon resources lie under the Chukchi Sea. Shell has not yet determined whether “the Chukchi is a good fit for the company,” Shell spokesman Curtis Smith told Petroleum News Jan. 21.
“Shell specifically identified pipelines to the existing and proposed North Slope pipeline infrastructure as the primary development scenario for any hydrocarbons discovered in the proposed (Chukchi Sea) sale area,” Smith said.
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