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DNR issues Foothills BIF for 2011-20
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
A final best interest finding is out for the Alaska North Slope Foothills areawide oil and gas lease sales for 2011-20. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas said May 26 that the director of the division found that potential benefits of North Slope Foothills areawide oil and gas lease sales outweigh possible adverse impacts, and that the sales will best serve the interests of the State of Alaska. The DNR commissioner concurred.
The finding allows sales to be conducted in the area for 10 years without repeating the entire finding process, unless the DNR commissioner determines that substantial new information justifies a supplement to the best interest finding.
The Foothills sales area lies between the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, south of the Umiat baseline and north of the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. There are some 7.6 million acres, but approximately 3.2 million acres are Native owned or Native selected and will not be included in lease sales.
DNR said it has determined that the area has relatively high natural gas potential and relatively low oil potential. Discoveries in the sale area — with the exception of the Umiat oil field — consist primarily of dry gas trapped in anticlinal fold structures.
“Oil and gas volumes discovered to date are currently best described as ‘sub-commercial resources’ whose development potential is contingent upon constantly fluctuating economic factors and connection to market,” DNR said.
The area lacks oil and gas development infrastructure.
NSB concerns The sale area is within the North Slope Borough and the borough had a number of comments on the finding.
Among them, the borough said the scope of the division’s review was overly narrow.
DNR said in its response that the final finding “does not speculate about possible future effects subject to future permitting that cannot reasonably be determined until the project or proposed use is more specifically defined.”
The borough also said the use of phasing avoided consideration of future environmental, sociological or economic effects.
DNR disagreed, noting that a chapter of the final finding was devoted to “consideration and discussion of foreseeable cumulative impacts due to oil and gas activities, and current research and information about those potential impacts.”
On informational issues raised by the borough, DNR said information from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill has been added to the final finding, along with information from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s recent North Slope spill analysis.
The borough was concerned about mitigation measures which were required only when practicable and DNR said that concern had resulted in changes to mitigation measures, which now state that the director of the Division of Oil and Gas must approve any proposed alternative.
In response to a suggestion from the borough, mitigation measures were changed to align the dates for exploration activities in the Chandler, Nanushuk, Itkillik, Kuparuk and Anaktuvuk river valleys to allow for subsistence hunting, with the same date restrictions for activities, Aug. 1 through Oct. 31, during the fall caribou migration.
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