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NSB municipal allotment proposal out Preliminary entitlement decision, site plan for some 5,300 acres on North Slope published by Division of Mining, Land and Water Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Mining, Land and Water has issued a preliminary municipal entitlement decision for North Slope Borough land selections.
The division said the preliminary decision and a draft site specific plan to reclassify and convey certain borough land selections are available at www.dnr.alaska.gov/mlw/muni/; comments are due Aug. 7.
The borough’s selections are primarily in the Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse area in the oil field beyond the security check points, with a few of the selections in Deadhorse and one selection some five miles south of Deadhorse along the Dalton Highway.
The division said the selections proposed for conveyance are intended to serve as a land base for public facilities as well as for industrial and economic development within the borough.
Some 5,300 acres are proposed for reclassification to provide for the proposed conveyance.
Municipal entitlements In its decision the division said Alaska has passed various statutes entitling Alaska boroughs and unified municipalities to receive general land grant entitlement from vacant, unappropriated and unreserved state land within their boundaries.
In 1973 the North Slope Borough filed applications for its municipal entitlement for lands overlying the developed North Slope oil fields — at that time primarily Prudhoe Bay. Those applications were rejected by the state on the basis that it was in the best interests of the state to retain those lands and that decision was upheld by the Alaska Supreme Court in 1978.
While pursuing its appeal in the case the North Slope Borough allowed its right to select any further municipal entitlement lands under the then-current law to expire, the division said.
In 1987 the Legislature amended the Municipal Entitlement Act and granted the North Slope Borough 89,850 acres in new municipal entitlement rights, at the same time excluding from the definition of vacant, unappropriated and unreserved land all land classified as resource management land prior to Sept. 1, 1983.
“By this exclusion, the Legislature intended to prevent the NSB from receiving land within the Prudhoe Bay field, which was virtually all classified as resource management land prior to 1983, as part of its entitlement,” the division said.
The North Slope Borough filed new municipal entitlement applications under the 1987 law, but despite the Legislature’s exclusion of pre-1983 resource management lands, many of the borough’s new selections included pre-1983 resource management lands overlying the Prudhoe Bay and surrounding oil fields.
The division said that to date some 5,006 acres have been approved for conveyance to the borough, leaving an entitlement balance of some 84,844 acres. While the selections under consideration in the present decision are only a portion of the total selections made by the borough, the division said the borough has selected less than its full 89,850 acre entitlement.
The decision considers some 23,521 acres selected by the borough within the central North Slope oil fields.
Numerous parcels The division evaluated numerous parcels shown on 14 maps in the preliminary decision.
The division said only two parcels or portions of parcels selected have current land classifications within the statutory vacant, unappropriated and unreserved land category and thus could be conveyed without any further action.
Any of the other parcels would have to be reclassified before they could be conveyed, and because of that the division said it has treated the borough’s selections as an implied request to review the land classification of the selected parcels.
The preliminary decision includes an analysis of land classification for the selected parcels and a determination of whether reclassification is appropriate.
“Parcels affected by this decision that are determined to be appropriate for reclassification must actually be reclassified through a site specific plan that establishes the classifications and management intent for the parcels,” the division said, and that plan is included for the parcels determined to be appropriate for reclassification.
The division said its decision proposes to approve some 6,855 acres for conveyance — reclassifying those lands as necessary — “subject to valid existing rights.”
The division said it is proposing to reject some 16,074 acres of borough selections “on the grounds of classification, overriding state interests, or both.”
Any action on approximately 592 acres is postponed because the state does not currently have title or tentative approval for conveyance or patent to the land.
Land classification analysis The division said that nearly all of the North Slope Borough selected land considered in the decision was either classified resource management land prior to Sept. 1, 1983, or is classified as reserved use land, and not conveyable without reclassification. DNR classifications “identify the primary use for which the land will be managed, subject to valid existing rights and to multiple use, and directly relate to the predominant resource value of an area, the current pattern of land uses, and the expected future pattern of such uses,” the division said.
The public interest may warrant reclassification of lands selected by the borough where the current land classification is not appropriate; or where land use supports reclassification, reclassification potentially would allow the land to be conveyed to the borough and DNR determines that the land should be conveyed to the borough as a part of its municipal entitlement. The division said land would have to meet all of those criteria to be reclassified.
The most prevalent use of lands in the area of North Slope Borough selections is oil and gas development, the division said, “including exploration, production, storage and transportation,” uses which are expected to be predominant in the future.
The division said if DNR reclassified lands in the oil field area, “the oil and gas land classification would be applied where the present or future use is most probably related to oil and gas exploration and development.”
“This would be an unconveyable classification and would not result in the approval of any of the NSB selections under consideration.”
Within this area, the division said, it could be appropriate under certain circumstances to classify individual parcels or portions of parcels as something other than oil and gas land, “if such use does not interfere with the on-going or expected future oil and gas use of the area. Accordingly, DNR reviewed each parcel to determine if any other classification could be applied to any parcel or portion of a parcel, without adversely affecting the predominant oil and gas use of the area.”
The classifications of land available for municipal entitlement include settlement and material land. Settlement land is land suitable for commercial or industrial development; material land is suitable for extraction of sand, gravel, stone, peat, clay and similar materials.
The decision includes a parcel-by-parcel analysis of land use considerations.
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