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

Vol. 15, No. 34 Week of August 22, 2010

Agency clarifies offshore review rules

Elizabeth Bluemink

Anchorage Daily News

A federal agency that regulates offshore oil and gas drilling in Alaska has clarified its rules this summer after a government audit said some of its Alaska employees were blocked from information that would help them assess environmental impacts.

The new directive was sent this summer to all 80 workers in the Alaska Region of the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — the former Minerals Management Service. An agency spokesman said Aug. 16 that mandatory training sessions for the Alaska workers began earlier in August.

The directive, developed by the agency’s regional managers, lists the rules for how their staff in Alaska must handle proprietary information received from oil and gas companies. The rules spell out everything from how the paperwork is color coded — with green lettering — to the steps workers should take if they’ve been denied access to information they need for their jobs.

The agency has overseen controversial federal lease sales for the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska’s northern coast. Some exploration activities on those leases are on hold as the federal government reconsiders its offshore leasing in light of this year’s massive Gulf of Mexico spill. The agency also is being sued by North Slope villages and environmental groups over the Beaufort and Chukchi lease sales.

Audit found inconsistencies

The audit, published in April, said the Alaska office’s actions were inconsistent with a 2008 federal policy requiring that the confidential documents from oil and gas companies be shared with analysts who make environmental assessments of drilling projects.

The agency has since pledged to comply with the policy, according to the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that issued the critical audit.

On Aug. 16, the Alaska spokesman for BOEMRE and the head of a federal whistle-blower group concerned about the agency’s handling of company data agreed that the new directive doesn’t change much.

“This directive clarifies procedures and ensures that everyone is following them. But it doesn’t change the procedures,” said John Callahan, a regional spokesman.

But the new directive doesn’t allow the public or third-party experts to see the oil company data used to justify agency decisions, complained Jeff Ruch, head of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a government worker whistle-blower group.

Confidentiality required

Callahan responded that federal law requires the agency to keep certain corporate data secret. Also, the companies would not provide the information if the agency didn’t keep it confidential, he added.

The audit charged that regional managers of the agency restricted their environmental analysts from reviewing the data.

The audit said the regional office managers offered the GAO some practical reasons for why they were restricting the flow of the information, such as the need to guard proprietary information.

But the audit noted some negative consequences from the lack of sharing. It said, for example, that five analysts reported difficulty getting a clear sense of the offshore projects they were tasked to review, including a proposed 2011 oil and gas lease sale in federal waters near Bristol Bay, a sale the Obama administration canceled this year.

The audit also recommended that the agency, at the national level, create a comprehensive handbook describing how its staff should comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the federal law that requires agencies to conduct environmental assessments.

The agency said it is reviewing how it implements the law and plans to publish the handbook next year.






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