DOI still reworking lease sale assessment

The U.S. Department of the Interior is still reworking its environmental analysis for its 2007-12 program of oil and gas lease sales on the outer continental shelf of the Beaufort Sea, the Chukchi Sea and the North Aleutian area, according to a report submitted on Nov. 27 to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by the U.S. Department of Justice.

As a follow-up to an April court decision upholding an appeal by the Native Village of Point Hope and several environmental organizations against the U.S. Minerals Management Service 2007-12 OCS lease sale program, the court has required Interior to complete a comparative analysis of the environmental sensitivity of different areas of the OCS, to determine whether any areas should be excluded from oil and gas leasing.

“Interior is continuing its internal review of a draft environmental sensitivity analysis; while Interior has made further progress, it has not yet completed that review,” the Department of Justice said in its Nov. 27 report.

Interior is also reviewing the “balancing and exclusion determinations” that are contained in the 2007-12 lease sale program, DOJ said.

There is no specific timeframe in which Interior has to complete its review of its environmental analysis, but the agency has to report the status of the review to the court every 60 days.

The lease sale program in question includes the February 2008 Chukchi Sea lease sale that attracted $2.6 billion in high bonus bids, as well as two further planned Chukchi Sea sales and planned sales in the Beaufort Sea and the North Aleutian basin. Shell plans to do some exploratory drilling in 2010 in Chukchi Sea leases obtained in the 2008 lease sale, while ConocoPhillips plans to drill in the Chukchi Sea in 2012.

—Alan Bailey