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Alaskans rip BLM over ‘legacy wells’ Hearing before a U.S. Senate committee elevates thorny issue to higher profile; federal official outlines near-term plugging plans Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
The issue of unplugged federal “legacy wells” on Alaska’s North Slope took on new prominence with a July 12 hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
The committee’s top-ranking Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and a pair of state officials used the hearing as a chance to rip the Interior Department, which is responsible for the wells.
Murkowski said it shouldn’t be the case that it is “literally taking an act of Congress” to push the federal government to properly plug the old wells and clean up junky drill sites.
“Senators, I can’t express my disappointment and shame at the Interior Department’s failure to address these environmental ticking time bombs,” testified Cathy Foerster, who heads the state agency that regulates drilling in Alaska.
“Allowing these unsafe and unsightly wells to litter Alaska’s wilderness while threatening wildlife, human safety and damaging the pristine arctic environment is unacceptable,” testified state Rep. Charisse Millett, an Anchorage Republican who has been pushing for action on the legacy wells.
On the receiving end of the blistering was Bud Cribley, state director of the Bureau of Land Management, the Interior Department agency that acts as landlord for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, in which most of the legacy wells are located.
Cribley said his agency is committed to squaring away the wells as funding allows, and he talked of a plugging operation to be mounted soon. He also seemed to deflate one of the main arguments from the critics.
The legacy wells The BLM says the legacy wells are 136 exploratory wells and boreholes the Navy and the U.S. Geological Survey drilled between 1943 and 1982.
Previously, the Maine-sized NPR-A was known as the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4. President Warren G. Harding created it in 1923 after geologists found oil seeps. The idea was to set aside an emergency oil supply for the Navy.
The legacy wells and boreholes, from 100 to 20,335 feet deep, were drilled to establish the feasibility of modern petroleum exploration and production methods in arctic conditions.
None of this drilling, nor more recent industry exploration efforts, have resulted in any production to date from NPR-A leases.
Alaska officials say the federal government never properly remediated many of the legacy well sites. They contend many wells were never properly plugged, are filled with drilling fluids or diesel, are open to the air, and have wellheads jutting up dangerously from the tundra. The exact location of a couple of wells is unknown, and some well sites are strewn with rusty barrels or other junk, the officials say.
‘Out the yazoo’ With the legacy wells, the federal government is getting away with environmental violations that never would be allowed for private industry, the Alaska officials argue.
“I want to emphasize to my colleagues how dire the situation in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska really is, and I think shed a little bit of light on the hypocrisy that is on display here in the federal government,” Murkowski said during the committee hearing, which very few senators attended.
Failure to clean up the wells “just continues the failed and broken promises that this federal government has made to the state of Alaska,” she said.
“While the federal government rightfully demands proper environmental stewardship on development in Alaska, and often uses its administrative powers to delay — stop — our responsible developers in the name of environmental protection, it turns a blind eye to its own environmental disaster,” Millett said. “This hypocrisy outrages Alaskans and should outrage all Americans.”
Foerster, chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, said many legacy well sites are out of compliance with state regulations. Her agency has been trying to obtain data on the wells from the BLM.
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., asked Foerster what would happen to a private sector operator who left behind sites like the legacy wells.
“They would be fined out the yazoo,” she replied, flicking her left pinkie as she talked. “Excuse me, they would be fined excessively, and we would refuse to approve permits to drill for them.”
Finding the money Murkowski and Millett emphasized that the federal government certainly has the money, if not the will, to clean up the legacy wells — and to not take years and years to do it. They noted the government had collected $9.4 billion from lease sales in the NPR-A and on Alaska’s outer continental shelf.
Cribley told the committee his agency could put together a plan “as big as the sky” to plug legacy wells, but obtaining the money through the budgeting process “is probably remote, at least from our perspective.”
Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said the legacy well situation “cries out for an earmark,” a remark that drew laughter and agreement from his colleagues. Congressional earmarks have fallen out of favor politically in recent years.
Offering a “point of clarification,” Cribley told the committee the federal government has netted only $125 million from lease sales in the NPR-A in the past decade. Of that, $86 million was spent remediating legacy wells.
Plugging plans The BLM has plugged 18 wells since 2002, Cribley said. The Navy plugged one well in 1952.
In 2004, the BLM did an inventory of the legacy wells. It identified a number that posed a potential hazard, but found that many sites presented no significant threat.
For example, 34 wells are uncased core tests that didn’t penetrate producing oil and gas zones and are now “naturally reclaimed,” the BLM says. It plans to ask the AOGCC to remove these from the legacy well list.
The BLM has dealt on an emergency basis with several wells jeopardized by extreme erosion along the Beaufort Sea coast.
The agency is now preparing an updated legacy well inventory, and has a strategy to address 13 legacy wells over three seasons.
The BLM plans to plug the Iko Bay No. 1 well, and two nearby wells, during the winter of 2013. The Navy drilled the 2,733-foot Iko Bay No. 1, about 15 miles southeast of Barrow, in 1975.
Foerster told the Senate committee that North Slope Natives have dubbed Iko Bay No. 1 “the whistling well,” because the wellhead is leaking natural gas.
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