State looks to federal grant to improve oil and gas permitting

Kristen Nelson, PNA editor-in-chief

When the state asks industry what it can do it improve its leasing program to accelerate exploration and development, it is often told to improve its permitting program and provide access to data, Alaska Division of Oil and Gas Director Mark Myers said May 1.

“The state has been looking at ways to make our processes more efficient,” he said, and has identified “a potential Department of Energy grant that will help us in multiple areas here and that we believe we can qualify for.”

Pat Galvin, director of the state’s Division of Governmental Coordination, said the U.S. Department of Energy “has made some money available to government agencies, state and local level, to use GIS technology to improve and speed up the permitting process and to use that technology in ways that make oil and gas development occur quicker.”

Galvin said that if the state got the DOE grant, it would implement a standardized online application system for the Alaska Coastal Management Program consistency review process. The state would also provide information online, including well data, geophysical data, cultural data and current lease land status, providing “a one-stop location for companies who are looking to acquire this information, particularly those who may not have developed their own database of this kind of information.”

Galvin said the state would submit is application by May 14.

AOGCC well data online

Well logs, which now have to be viewed at the commission, would be available online and on demand, Myers said, along with publicly available gravity and magnetic data.

“So the view is that explorers that aren’t Alaska based or explorers that haven’t maintained their data bases to the current level will have access to the critical well test data,” he said.

Permitting could also be standardized, he said, by providing better interagency coordination between the Division of Governmental Coordination, the AOGCC and DNR.