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Environmental groups continue challenge to Beaufort Sea sale Opening brief from Trustees for Alaska says Division of Oil and Gas incorrect in phasing impact analysis until development proposed Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
Trustees for Alaska continues to challenge the state’s July 1999 best interest finding for its first areawide Beaufort Sea oil and gas sale, originally scheduled for last October and now planned for this November.
Trustees filed an opening brief in Alaska Superior Court May 4 on behalf of the Alaska Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Alaska Wilderness League, Greenpeace Inc. and the Wilderness Society.
Division of Oil and Gas Lease Sale Manager Jim Hansen told PNA May 22 that the state has been talking to Trustees about the schedule for court dates and believes that there is enough time to get a judge to rule before the sale.
Trustees first appealed the best interest finding in Superior Court in September after an August appeal for reconsideration to the commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources was denied. Trustees asked the court to stay the sale pending a decision on the appeal, but withdrew the stay request after the 1999 sale was deferred by DNR because of uncertainty over BP Amoco’s acquisition of ARCO.
Scheduled for November The Beaufort Sea areawide sale is currently scheduled to be held in November in conjunction with the North Slope areawide sale.
Trustees told the court that DNR violated state statute by “impermissibly” phasing its review of impacts of the Beaufort Sea areawide sale by failing “to discuss and evaluate both the transportation infrastructure necessary to bring any oil found in the sale area to market and the impacts of such infrastructure on the environment and on affected communities” and by failing “to identify the cumulative effects of the sale.”
Trustees also argued that DNR violated state administrative code by “failing to identify a significant public need for the sale, and by failing to evaluate whether there were any reasonable alternatives” to the sale and “by assuming the suitability of remote offshore areas for the development of major energy facilities.”
Tracts at either end of North Slope deleted The state said last July that three tracts were deleted from the sale area because of conflict with the bowhead whale spring migration. Those tracts are not covered in the best interest finding and will not be offered for lease.
All the most westerly tracts, from Point Barrow to Tangent Point, have been deferred from this sale, as have all the most easterly tracts, from Barter Island to the Canadian border. These tracts were included in the best interest finding and the state said that while they will not be offered for lease in this sale, they may be included in future lease sales.
The Beaufort Sea areawide sale covers some 2 million acres divided into more than 500 tracts, 516 of which were included in the July 15 sale notice.
Minimum bid is $10 an acre. Tracts farthest from North Slope infrastructure have a 10-year term have a fixed royalty rate of 12.5 percent. Tracts north of existing North Slope development from Harrison Bay in the west to Point Brownlow in the east have a term of seven years and a fixed royalty rate of 16.6666 percent.
Two tracts adjacent to Point Thomson have a seven-year term and a fixed royalty of 20 percent.
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