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Mayor opposes drilling near Teshekpuk Lake
Petroleum News
The mayor of the North Slope Borough has come out against an amended federal plan that would allow oil drilling in National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska between Teshekpuk Lake and the Beaufort Sea.
Edward Itta said the area is too important for ducks, geese and caribou.
“The risks outweigh the benefits. The wildlife and habitat values of the Teshekpuk Lake area in northeastern NPR-A are irreplaceable, and there’s no need to rush into oil and gas development in that area,” the borough said in a press release.
Itta supports oil and gas development on the North Slope but he says there is plenty of room for exploration in NPR-A without trampling the sensitive area around Teshekpuk Lake. That area, he said, should remain off limits.
The mayor said he and his family have camped each summer for years in the area 75 miles southeast of Barrow.
Itta described the 400,000-acre expanse of tundra as “my own Serengeti,” echoing a term used by opponents of oil drilling in the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The borough supports ANWR development.
Earlier this month a top Department of the Interior official in Washington signed a record of decision revising a 1998 plan that blocked oil and gas drilling in the area between Teshekpuk Lake and the coast. (See story in the Jan. 15 issue of Petroleum News.)
The amended plan allows leasing of the entire 400,000 acres but caps the area disturbed by roads, gravel pads and other production facilities at 2,100 acres.
That’s about half of one percent of the area, according to Henri Bisson, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska director. Enviros talk legal action Environmental groups condemned the decision and vowed to pursue a lawsuit that lay dormant for the past year while all sides awaited the record of decision.
The decision took about a year to make because of the complexity of the issues, Bisson said.
BLM issued its final environmental impact statement and leasing plan in January 2005.
Over the past year the agency made several changes. It removed the 200,000-acre Teshekpuk Lake, the North Slope’s largest freshwater lake, from lease offerings. It also prohibited permanent surface occupancy on thousands of additional acres north and south of the lake.
According to the North Slope Borough, BLM apparently hoped the adjustments would ease local concerns.
“It didn’t work,” the borough said.
“Minor amendments can’t fix this plan. It should sit on a shelf until all the other less sensitive areas are developed,” the mayor said, calling for more baseline scientific data before the government takes any risks with this “national wildlife treasure.”
—The Associated Press contributed to this article
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