Bill requires N. Aleutian sale by 2015

Some in Congress are mounting a new push to conduct offshore oil and gas leasing in the North Aleutian basin.

The basin, in Southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay, currently is off-limits to leasing. Calling the bay “a national treasure that we must protect for future generations,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in March 2010 withdrew the area from leasing plans through mid-2017.

The action nixed a planned 2011 lease sale in the North Aleutian basin.

On Feb. 16, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed an energy bill, H.R. 3408, that contains a provision requiring a North Aleutian basin lease sale by 2015. The same bill contains language to allow oil and gas leasing on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Both the Bristol Bay and ANWR provisions are likely to meet resistance in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

At least one major company, Shell, has shown significant interest in the North Aleutian basin, citing potential for a liquefied natural gas development.

A 2006 Interior Department assessment of the basin estimated a mean technically recoverable gas resource of 8.6 trillion cubic feet, and an oil and gas condensate resource of 753 million barrels. In 1988, the government held a lease sale in the basin, opening high bids totaling $95 million. Some years later, however, the leases would be bought back as part of the fallout from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

The idea of drilling in the basin is controversial due to Bristol Bay’s extraordinary stocks of commercially exploited salmon, bottomfish and crab.

—Wesley Loy