HOME PAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS, Print Editions, Newsletter PRODUCTS READ THE PETROLEUM NEWS ARCHIVE! ADVERTISING INFORMATION EVENTS PETROLEUM NEWS BAKKEN MINING NEWS

Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
May 2010

Vol. 15, No. 22 Week of May 30, 2010

No Yukon land exchange decision final

US Fish and Wildlife Service issues Yukon Flats record of decision documenting no wildlife refuge land exchange with Doyon Ltd.

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said May 25 that the record of decision is now available for the final environmental impact statement for a proposed land exchange in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

The ROD documents the agency’s selection of the no land exchange alternative (no action alternative), the preferred alternative in the final EIS which was released March 12.

A proposed land exchange between FWS and Doyon Ltd. in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge had been on the table for some five years. Last July FWS indicated that its preferred alternative for the final EIS would be “no action.”

The proposed exchange involved 110,000 acres of refuge lands that are believed to hold developable oil and gas reserves and oil and gas rights to an adjacent 97,000 acres of refuge lands.

The proposed action considered would have involved the refuge receiving a minimum of 150,000 acres of Doyon lands within the refuge boundaries. Doyon would have reallocated 56,500 acres of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act land entitlements within the refuge to lands outside the refuge.

ANSCA selection prior to refuge

Yukon Flats is a lowland area of some 15,000 square miles around the Yukon River between the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the Canadian border. The agency administers the 8.6 million acre Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Doyon and some Native village corporations own a patchwork of surface and subsurface land, some 2 million acres, inside the refuge boundary, lands the Native corporations selected under ANSCA prior to establishment of the refuge.

FWS said there were a number of reasons it selected the no action option:

•It has “a limited understanding of the effects that oil and gas development would have on the hydrology of lands exchanged to Doyon” and lands that would be retained by the agency;

•The exchange would create a private lands corridor almost splitting the refuge in two, fragmenting habitat and potentially degrading biological integrity, diversity and environmental health;

•The agency is concerned the land exchange could magnify projected climate change impacts on the refuge;

•Infrastructure associated with access corridors would increase human use of the refuge; and

•Concern that lands proposed for acquisition by FWS are more likely — based on U.S. Geological Survey data — to be adjacent to development, making those lands less desirable to the agency and casting “doubts on the benefits of the exchange to all involved.”

Geologic studies

Petroleum News reported last year that geologic studies done since the land swap was proposed raised questions about the land selected, because some existing Doyon land now appears more prospective for oil and gas than originally thought, encouraging Doyon to promote development on its existing Yukon Flats lands.

A USGS evaluation of gravity data for the Yukon Flats basin indicates the existence of subbasins within the basin, most with depths in excess of 8,000 feet. A subsequent Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska oil and gas assessment estimated 300 million to 1 billion barrels of oil in the basin and perhaps 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

“We clearly think that this area is permissive of at least a couple, maybe more, Alpine-sized fields,” James Mery, Doyon vice president of lands and natural resources, told Petroleum News in 2008.

Earlier this year CGGVeritas shot 2-D seismic data for Doyon in a 200,000-acre block of Native land in Yukon Flats owned by Doyon and Dinyee, the village corporation for Stevens Village. The area targeted is north of Stevens Village and within 15 to 30 miles of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.






Petroleum News - Phone: 1-907 522-9469 - Fax: 1-907 522-9583
[email protected] --- http://www.petroleumnews.com ---
S U B S C R I B E

Copyright Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA)©2013 All rights reserved. The content of this article and web site may not be copied, replaced, distributed, published, displayed or transferred in any form or by any means except with the prior written permission of Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA). Copyright infringement is a violation of federal law subject to criminal and civil penalties.