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BLM sets aggressive agenda for NPR-A issues Bisson says oil could flow from Alpine satellite proposal in 2008 Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
The Bureau of Land Management “has a fairly aggressive agenda of things that we want to accomplish in the next few years,” Henri Bisson, Alaska state director of the federal Bureau of Land Management, told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance May 15.
That agenda is aggressive both in content and in timetable. And many of the agenda items are in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, including lease sales, environmental impact statements for a planning area and for a development project, a supplemental EIS, a reevaluation of how the agency's North Slope science needs should be met and unitization for National Petroleum Reserve leases.
Other agency priorities include speeding up the land transfer process in Alaska and planning efforts for public lands managed by the agency's Glennallen and Anchorage field offices.
BLM is moving ahead with all these projects, Bisson said: “And everything that we said we're going to do is on schedule and we're going to get the work done.” NPR-A a focus In the 23 million acre NPR-A, “the largest contiguous block of public land administered by the BLM anywhere in the United States,” Bisson said, the agency held oil and gas lease sales in the 4 million acre northeast planning area in 1999 and 2002, leasing 193 tracts, some 1.4 million acres, for $167 million in bonus bids.
A draft EIS is under way for the ConocoPhillips Alaska-Anadarko Petroleum proposal for Alpine satellite development. Thirty-six comments are being evaluated and BLM expects to issue a draft EIS in October, Bisson said. A final EIS and record of decision on this project are expected early next summer, he said, “and we expect that some of the oil being addressed in that EIS would be the first actual production from the NPR-A and would begin flowing by 2008.”
In other areas of the northeast planning area BLM is increasing its resource estimates, based on “more recent drilling information and new seismic data. … The number will be a little lower north of Teshekpuk Lake because there's been no drilling or no seismic data collected in that area,” Bisson said. Reevaluation of Northeast NPR-A The agency announced in April that it will “take a second look at the northeast portion of the National Petroleum Reserve,” Bisson said. That second look will involve preparation of a supplemental EIS to address two questions: should the agency make additional areas in the northeast planning area available for oil and gas leasing, and if so, under what conditions; and should the agency's surface management for the northeast area be “more consistent with what is shaping up for the northwest portion of the National Petroleum Reserve?”
BLM is reevaluating the northeast planning area because 600,000 acres around Teshekpuk Lake were placed off limits to leasing in the original EIS and 240,000 acres were made available for leasing but with no surface occupancy allowed.
The agency has changed its estimates of oil in place and believes “that up to 2 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil has been unnecessarily placed off limits,” Bisson said. Some “development in the vicinity of Teshekpuk Lake is absolutely essential to the viability of the Barrow Arch plays, both offshore and onshore,” he said, and BLM now knows exploration can be done safely with little environmental impact.
“We think we have a better strategy to permit development with greater flexibility than we previously thought. Whether or not we can do what I think we can do will depend a lot on the public's ability to understand and accept the difference between an adaptive process and prescribed stipulations,” Bisson said.
The previous decisions is being revisited because of the significance of energy resources in the northeast National Petroleum Reserve, he said. A final record of decisions for changes in the northeast NPR-A plan should be signed by the end of 2004, with a lease sale in June 2005.
Northwest NPR-A draws 96,000 comments The draft EIS for the northwest National Petroleum Reserve planning area, some 8.8 million acres, was released in January. BLM used a state-of-the-art Internet site, Bisson said, and anyone with a computer could look at all of the text and maps and “write on them electronically and submit them to us with corrections, comments and alterations.”
Bisson said the agency may have “succeeded too well” with the Internet site: it received almost 96,000 comments. Because most of them were the same or very similar comments, however, “the same technology that made it possible to send comments easily also makes it possible for us to evaluate them more easily.”
It took a week, but a team of nine read “each and every one of those comments, one at a time, and they used their software power to evaluate and categorize the comments,” he said.
BLM also received “lengthy, substantial and detailed comments” from the Audubon Society, the state of Alaska, the North Slope Borough and some others. BLM's staff is working on preferred alternative and Bisson said he has been “personally consulting informally with a number of groups, including industry, the North Slope Borough, Alaska Natives, environmental groups, other federal agencies and even the governor, to clarify issues identified in the comments.”
BLM held a workshop with state, North Slope Borough and federal agencies the week of May 5 “to sort through our proposed stipulations and mitigation measures for oil and gas exploration and development. We're very close to a decision on what measures to include in the final EIS,” he said.
The final EIS is due out the first week of October and a record of decision by the end of the year. A lease sale in the northwest planning area is proposed for June 2004. Science management oversight group BLM is also moving ahead with establishment of a science management oversight group to provide coordination on science needs between land owners, industry and scientists. Federal managers have already met several times “and have agreed to pursue a partnership with the state and the North Slope Borough to better manage our science needs,” Bisson said. There have been informal meetings with state commissioners and he said the next step is a meeting with the state and North Slope Borough to discuss the proposal.
What is being proposed, he said, is establishing a federal-state-borough science management partnership “focused on the development of a science and data management strategy that meets the needs of land owners, industry and the public,” he said. A science advisory team would make recommendations to the oversight group and public workshops would help shape and modify strategy.
The intention is not, Bisson said, to hold up decisions while more information is gathered.
“It is to ensure that we can make better, more timely and more defensible decisions as we move ahead.” Lands transfer, new planning efforts BLM is also working with Alaska's Congressional delegation on accelerating lands transfer from the federal government. The program is scheduled to end in 2020, but if proposed legislation passes in Congress and BLM gets the necessary funds, “we'll be done in 2009 instead of 2020,” Bisson said.
BLM is working with its resource advisory council, the Bristol Bay Native Corp. and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources on a 39-township pilot area near Bristol Bay. “This pilot will help us to develop procedures to unravel the maze of land segregations that prevent mineral exploration and development on remaining public lands managed by BLM,” he said.
BLM is also beginning two new planning efforts on areas managed by its Anchorage and Glennallen field offices: “oil and gas leasing and other future uses of BLM will be considered in both of those plans,” he said.
And the agency is close to completing “specific Alaska guidance” for unitization of BLM leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
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