Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has issued a secretarial order affirming the Trump administration’s commitment to energy development in the state of Alaska. The order, which Zinke signed on May 31 during the Alaska Oil and Gas Association’s annual conference, emphasizes the importance of Alaska’s energy resources to U.S. geopolitical security.
“The president .... has declared that the war on North American energy is now over,” Zinke told the AOGA conference.
Zinke told the conference that the president had tasked him with preparing the United States to be energy dominant, a situation that would make the country stronger and, hence, the world safer.
“The only path for energy dominance is through the great state of Alaska,” Zinke said, a comment that drew cheers from the conference attendees.
Specific actions
The new order mandates some specific actions aimed at bolstering Alaska oil and gas development.
The actions, which must go into effect within 21 days, consist of preparing a schedule for revising the Integrated Activity Plan for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska; evaluating how to maximize the number of tracts offered in the next NPR-A lease sale, under the terms of the current NPR-A plan; and preparing a plan for an update to the assessment of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas resources on the North Slope, focusing on NPR-A and on the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
“Today’s announcement marks a bright, new chapter in Alaska’s history,” said Gov. Bill Walker in response to Zinke’s action. “Thanks to Secretary Zinke’s leadership, we are ushering in an era of unprecedented federal-state partnership to develop Alaska’s resources.”
“This secretarial order is exactly the type of announcement that so many Alaskans have been asking for: a smart, timely step to restore access to our lands, throughput to our trans-Alaska pipeline, and growth to our economy under reasonable regulations that do not sacrifice environmental protections,” commented Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Community trust
Zinke said that the federal government is committed to working with Alaska Native communities, and that his agency expects to gain communities’ trust by sitting down with them and learning their culture.
“I welcome Secretary Zinke’s new secretarial order,” commented Harry Brower, mayor of the North Slope Borough, in response to Zinke’s order. “North Slope Borough residents recognize the importance of oil and gas to our local economy and the ability of our borough and city governments to provide public services. We look forward to working with the secretary to continue to permit responsible development on the North Slope while, at the same time, protecting our wildlife and our subsistence way of life.”
The BLM plan
Zinke’s orders relating to the NPR-A Integrated Activity Plan, which was finalized in 2012, presumably respond to the fact that the plan places much of the northern part of the reserve off limits to oil and gas leasing and development. The area in question has become a focus of recent interest because of a new, prolific oil play associated with the Nanushuk and Torok formations that appears to cross the northern part of NPR-A.
But the region is also particularly sensitive from an environmental perspective and includes Teshekpuk Lake, in an area of great importance for waterfowl and caribou. During a press conference following his announcement to AOGA Zinke commented that he is a firm believer in the National Environmental Policy Act, the statute that mandates environmental reviews for federal actions. He said that his agency would progress along the required process for plan development.
“I think NEPA has been the backbone of firm environmental policy,” Zinke said.
But he also questioned some agency actions from the past, including decisions that made the most productive tracts unavailable.
Zinke also commented that he plans a major reorganization of Interior, to improve the efficiency of the federal permitting processes.
Previous resource assessments
The U.S. Geological Survey conducted its last oil and gas assessment for NPR-A in 2010, estimating the possibility of just 896 million barrels of undiscovered, recoverable oil in the reserve. That estimate assumed that the hydrocarbon resources in reservoirs broadly equivalent to the Alpine field in the Colville River Delta region become dominated by gas rather than oil to the west, and the assessment downplayed the oil potential of the shallower Brookian sequence of rocks. Those recent Nanushuk/Torok discoveries in the Brookian would seem to call for a revised resource assessment in the region.
The last USGS assessment of ANWR was completed in 1998. That estimated a mean undiscovered volume of 7.7 billion barrels of oil in the 1002 area of the refuge. Although more is now known about North Slope geology than was known at that time, no new drilling or seismic surveying has been conducted in the reserve since that assessment was conducted.
