BLM to offer northwest NPR-A for leasing

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief

The federal Bureau of Land Management intends to keep all 8.8 million acres of BLM-administered lands and federal subsurface lands in the northwest National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska planning area open for oil and gas leasing, the agency said Nov. 20, including 100 percent of high oil and gas potential BLM subsurface. That is the agency’s preferred alternative in its final environmental impact statement, scheduled for release Nov. 28.

Henri Bisson, BLM’s Alaska state director, told the Resource Development Council in Anchorage that part of the agency’s plan calls for protecting sensitive areas through a large deferral and surface occupancy restrictions. BLM expects to release the final EIS Nov. 28, but an executive summary and maps are already available on the agency’s home page, www.ak.blm.gov.

“This plan will help us implement Congressional direction to maximize the production of the oil and gas resources in an environmentally safe manner, while protecting the important biological, subsistence and cultural values also found in this area,” Bisson said in a statement.

BLM released its draft environmental impact statement for the northwest planning area in January, and received some 96,000 responses. Most were the result of an organized e-mail and fax campaign, Bisson said, but the agency also received “a number of well thought-out, carefully researched comments from the local Audubon Society, the North Slope communities, the state of Alaska and others.

“We used this information to develop our final plan,” he said.

While the agency chose to keep all 8.8 million acres open to leasing, it took steps to protect sensitive areas for water quality, vegetation, wetlands, fish and wildlife habitat, subsistence uses and scenic and recreational values.

Leasing deferral at Wainwright

Within that lease deferral area, BLM is recommending the establishment of a 102,000-acre Kasegaluk Lagoon special area, subject to no-permanent surface-occupancy stipulation. The agency said the Kasegaluk Lagoon, at the far northwestern corner of the planning area, “offers primitive recreation experiences, including kayak and small boat paddling along the coast. It is also rich in wildlife, including migratory birds and marine mammals, and features marine tidal flats that are rare on the North Slope.”

BLM is also proposing that for 1.6 million acres along coastal areas, deepwater lakes and key rivers, there would be no surface occupancy for permanent facilities. Study areas will also be designated for Pacific black brandt and caribou.

A record of decision is expected in early January, Bisson said, and a lease sale for selected tracts in the northwest portion of the NPR-A in June.

Preferred alternative

BLM said no wilderness study areas or wild and scenic rivers are proposed under the preferred alternative.

Bisson told the Resource Development Council that a record of decision is expected in early January, and a lease sale on “selected tracts” in the northwest portion of NPR-A next June. He said straight-line boundaries of the lease tracts don’t correspond precisely to the irregular boundary of the Ikpikpuk River, so some leases extend into the northeast planning area, and that acreage will also be offered in the June sale.

Jody Weil, BLM’s chief of external affairs, told Petroleum News Nov. 24 that the agency hasn’t determined tracts for the June lease sale. “Right now we are focusing on getting the record of decision ready for signature in early January, and then we will focus on the lease tracts,” Weil said.

The agency will ask industry about areas of interest, Bisson told Petroleum News.

“We are going to go out for expressions of interest to determine which areas have the greatest probability of receiving bids if we offer them for lease,” he said.

BLM will then balance industry interest with its own assessment of hydrocarbon potential.

“Then we’ll look at our staffing capability to evaluate how many tracts we can process if we receive bids for all that we offer.”

Opportunities in coal, minerals, coalbed gas

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News editor-in-chief

Oil and gas are not the only resource opportunities in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, Henri Bisson, Alaska state director of the federal Bureau of Land Management, told the Resource Development Council in Anchorage Nov. 20.

The NPR-A also has the largest coal reserves in North America, Bisson said, with coal-bearing beds which “follow the Colville River drainage for some 150 miles and are estimated to exceed 2.7 trillion tons of coal with less than 500 feet of overburden.”

Any development of that resource would be in the future, because the NPR-A is not open for coal leasing and the area has no infrastructure for moving coal to market. One thing that might make economics more favorable, he said, would be coal gasification — processing the coal and shipping the gas.

NPR-A also has other minerals, including an extension of the lead-zinc mineral belt being mined at Red Dog and large barite deposits.

Heavy oil, being developed at existing North Slope fields, extends into NPR-A, Bisson said, and BLM, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the state of Alaska have a joint science project pending with BLM’s National Science Center in Denver, Colo.

“The project would study the potential for low-impact drilling techniques for heavy oil” which “could be employed year-round in a tundra environment.” Bisson said he is hopeful funding will be secured for the project to begin this year.

BLM is also pursuing research in gas hydrates, and has assistance agreements with the U.S. Geological Survey and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys which would tie in with the University of Alaska Fairbanks for a three to five year research project to “further identify locations and quantities across the North Slope.”

Coalbed natural gas a near-term resource

BLM was involved in the test project at Chignik on the Alaska Peninsula, where drilling was done to see if there was coal at depth. Those results were not satisfactory, he said, but other projects are scheduled at Wainwright and Fort Yukon.

Bisson said the agency expects to spend about $150,000 a year for the next three years on interagency coalbed natural gas research in Alaska, and will be working the USGS this summer to re-enter a North Slope climate hole to determine if there is gas present which is suitable for development.

BLM is also partnering with Evergreen Resources in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough to model production holes to see how much gas and water is produced, to tie in with findings from the North Slope. He said the agency will also be looking at natural gas potential from federal lands in the Matanuska-Susitna area and elsewhere during its ring of fire planning effort covering an area that runs from the Aleutians, up through the upper end of Cook Inlet and down through Southeast Alaska.