|
MMS issues call for North Aleutian basin
Petroleum News
The Minerals Management Service has issued a call for information and a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact study for Lease Sale 214 in the North Aleutian basin planning area.
The sale is proposed for 2011 under the 2007-12 outer continental shelf leasing program.
MMS said the April 8 call and notice begin the information-gathering and scoping process and do not indicate a preliminary decision to lease in the area.
The agency said the area is believed to be gas-prone. It covers some 5.6 million acres in the southeastern Bering Sea.
MMS held a North Aleutian Basin Information Status and Research Planning Meeting in 2006 to gather stakeholder input and identify needed research and monitoring activities. MMS recently published a report on the proceedings and a synthesis of the literature related to natural resources of the North Aleutian basin, identifying some 600 new sources of information.
In conjunction with the University of Alaska Fairbanks MMS has contracted with Rutgers University to modify an ice-ocean circulation model for Bristol Bay, a study which will aid in determining necessary actions to protect the area, the agency said. This modeling study began in the fall and will continue for two years.
Right whale being studied In 2007, MMS and the National Marine Fisheries Service began a study of the North Pacific right whale, a federally designated endangered species, in the North Aleutian basin.
Proposed studies for fiscal year 2008 include research on subsistence food harvest and sharing activities, studies of juvenile and maturing salmon and nearshore mapping of juvenile salmon and settling crab; additional studies are proposed for FY 2009.
The EIS will focus on potential environmental effects of oil and gas exploration, development and production. MMS said it will consider comments received in response to the call and notice in determining the proposed sale area and the scope of the EIS.
Nominations and comments on the call must be received by July 7.
The area was last leased in 1988. The 23 leases that were issued were eventually repurchased by the government in 1995, following an October 1989 congressional moratorium banning Department of the Interior expenditures in support of any petroleum leasing or development activities in the planning area. An executive order issued in 1998 extended the moratorium as a presidential withdrawal until 2012. The congressional moratorium was discontinued in 2004 and in 2007 the presidential withdrawal was modified to exclude the North Aleutian basin.
| 