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BLM issues exploratory drilling permits for NPR-A Winter exploratory work delayed when government solicitors decide environmental assessment requires 30-day public comment period Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land management authorized ARCO Alaska Inc. to begin its winter exploration program in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska Jan. 26.
The authorization covers eight wells, but BLM said it expects that the work will be spread out over three seasons, with only two or three wells expected to be completed this year before the season ends in the spring.
Fran Cherry, BLM’s Alaska region director, told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance Jan. 21 that the agency had to add a 30-day public comment period just as it was ready to issue an environmental assessment for ARCO Alaska Inc.’s planned winter exploratory drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
“Barring any unforeseen circumstances or oversights we anticipate the approval of ARCO’s drilling permits sometime during the week of Jan. 24,” Cherry said.
He said BLM had received comments during the 30-day comment period, most of them asking for an additional 45 days to review the environmental assessment. Cherry said the agency hadn’t seen substantive reasons for extending the review by 45.
BLM spokesman Ed Bovy said Jan. 27 that the agency received a bunch of comments on the EA, fairly detailed in some areas, and was working through them.
30-day comment not anticipated Cherry told the Alliance that the agency had not anticipated the 30-day public comment period until it was ready to issue the EA. What triggered the public comment, he said, was executive orders dealing with projects in wetlands.
When the agency’s solicitors said that the 30-day notice probably applied to NPR-A they also said they would support going ahead without the notice, Cherry said, but were concerned that the agency would probably lose if a lawsuit were filed over the lack of a public comment period.
Had the agency known of the requirement, he said, it would have done some things differently, and he recommended to industry that staking for future projects be done as early as possible in the season to allow for the comment period.
Cherry said he was “very aware of everyone wanting to get started out there when I made that decision on the 30 days…” But without the 30-day comment period, he said, there was the risk of a lawsuit — “and we wouldn’t have had any drilling this winter.”
ARCO had to re-juggle their efforts and change their drilling pattern based on the delay, Cherry said.
Future NPR-A sales Cherry said he has already had discussions with his staff about future lease sales in the northeastern portion of NPR-A.
“We’re ready to have some additional lease sales up there — at least in the northeast portion of the NPR-A,” he said.
“In the future,” he said, “we anticipate continued interest in exploration of the newly issued leases over the next five years. I think everybody’s waiting to see what ARCO comes up with, whether that pans out or not. If they hit something or not, interest will wax or wane. We don’t expect production for several years until they get something economic, something to justify building of additional pipelines to bring it into the rest of the system.
Once NPR-A drilling is beyond the exploration mode, BLM will be required to do a full-field development environmental impact statement, and Cherry said the agency hopes to be able to built that based on the EIS done for the lease sale.
The EIS and integrated activity plan that the agency has completed cover additional sales for the northeast portion of the NPR-A, he said.
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