The North Slope Borough has issued permits for Great Bear Petroleum’s year-round source rock, or shale, exploration and evaluation program south of the Prudhoe Bay unit.
According to Gordon Brower, deputy director of the division that oversees permitting for the borough’s Planning and Community Service Department, the permits were administratively approved and did not differentiate between winter or summer activities because Great Bear’s six proposed drilling pads “are in a transportation corridor,” between the Dalton Highway and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, where there are existing year-round roads and industrial activities.
The borough and Great Bear had to “work through a number of other things” before the permits were approved, Brower said, including a request for a “supplemental plan of operations for each of the pads,” which the company provided.
Resources, such as wildlife, which could be impacted by Great Bear’s program, were satisfactorily addressed by the company, Brower said.
Great Bear has also made progress on its Oil Discharge Prevention and Contingency Plan filing with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
“The review is nearly complete and assuming everything is in order it will be approved within a week or so,” DEC’S Betty Schorr told Petroleum News Dec. 15.
—Kay Cashman
